August 5, 2007: Toothache

Today turned out to be toothache day for Dominica. And yet another day without any Internet access for us. We are really beginning to appreciate the Treo with web access from Verizon because at least we can continue to check email and get online for really basic things when we really need to. Andy and I were even able to do a little bit of work today over it – but not very much.

Dominica’s tooth is feeling much worse today and she is in some considerable pain. She discovered that the only thing that really keeps the pain at bay is keeping cold water directly on the tooth but to keep this up she is consuming water at a rate of approximately one ounce per minute which is 60 fluid ounces or about 1.75 litres per hour! That means that she is not that much shy of a gallon every two hours which is faster than your body can maintain essential electrolyte levels if sustained. So we were forced to find another solution.

I ran out to Walmart and bought some topical tooth ache gel and got some regular medicine as recommended by Dominica’s brother Joe the pharmacist. We tried that but quickly found that it did little or not good and that the water was the only thing that was making any difference. While I was at Walmart I did find the complete Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century and the first part of the first season of The Fall Guy on DVD. Good, classic stuff.

Eventually we decided that the pain had gotten so bad that there was nothing to do but to attempt to get her in to see a weekend dentist. We tried finding one in Newark but had no luck on our own. So we eventually called 1-800-DENTIST which found us a dentist in Kearny, New Jersey. The dentist in Kearny was out of town and unable to see us today but prescribed some medicine for Min to deal with the pain and some anti-bacterial medication just in case there was an infection.

So I drove out to Walgreen’s in the Ironbound and picked up Dominica’s medications from the very nice twenty-four hour pharmacy there. I also got us more water as Min had depleted our supplies very quickly, some ice cream, bread and other basics.

We spent the evening watching either Buck Rogers which both of us used to watch when we were very young and brings back so many memories or Bones which Dominica had purchased while on vacation.

Dominica is scheduled to see her dentist at nine tomorrow morning.  We will know more then as to what is going on.  Hopefully with the medications that she has now she will be able to sleep some tonight.  That alone will help a lot.