“Remoted” Day 345 (Wednesday)

Last Saturday’s dental visit has triggered a mystery. The appointment was for a routine cleaning, but there was also the tweak for the toothache of the day before. There were 18 x-rays taken, which was noted as “done every five years.” I don’t ever remember having 18 individual x-rays done at once. 

I used to have flaming hair
and could open my mouth.

Anyway, after the appointment, as I was trying to eat lunch with my Mom, I could barely open my mouth wide enough to fit a fork with salad in it. It became a game of eating one piece of lettuce or anything else in the salad one tiny piece at a time. Supper was the same situation with the remainder of the salad I couldn’t eat at lunchtime. 

Flash forward to today. I still can’t open my mouth fully. In highly scientific terms, I can open my mouth the height of one finger. In food terms, I can open it one Family Dollar brand strawberry crème sandwich cookie, which represents the first solid food I’ve had since last Friday. It’s been oatmeal and vegetable soup with the veggie bits smashed with a fork and slurped through the space in the teeth. The slurping sound is gross, even to me. Important note: the oatmeal and the soup are separate meals. The soup is easier to consume if drunk from a cup. Thank goodness I made a huge pot of soup on Sunday.

Brushing the teeth is painful. The outer surfaces are easy, but all the others are difficult if not impossible to access with the toothbrush. My mouth tastes a little like death as a result. It is gross. So, so gross.

There have been multiple conversations with the dental office and a visit to my primary care doctor on Tuesday. After checking it out, the primary team thinks it’s a muscular-skeletal issue. There is no sign of ear infection, yet the earache keeps returning. Another dental visit is probably next, but we’re waiting a day or two to see if the muscle relaxers from the doctor help first. The ice pack has been traded for heat. 

On a whim, while texting with a friend about this tonight, I searched “lockjaw.” Except for my pain being on only one side and my not having stepped on or eaten any rusty nails and contracting tetanus, all the symptoms fit – can’t open mouth fully, headache, earache, jaw pain. The last tetanus shot was in October 2011 after the broken leg incident. 

Over five days of this, a variety of things have danced through my head, including the fear of dying on my own vomit because I can’t open my mouth to hurl. Even after reminding myself that I vomit approximately once every ten years and the last time was approximately 2018. On the bright side, the inability to eat has been rewarded with the loss of two pandemic pounds.

It would be great if this was the only thing that had been going on in the past week, but there is actually more. Too much more.