A Series of Unfortunate Events (A.K.A. reasons for my week-long hiatus from the Blogosphere)

So last weekend started innocuously enough. I had had a prior dentist appointment the Saturday before, and my dentist had given me the go signal to have my impacted wisdom tooth (bottom right) removed. It would be dental surgery, so I would have to have anesthesia because he would be essentially cutting open my gum, drilling holes into my wisdom tooth until it broke apart, and then extracting the pieces. Sounds painful, right?

Right.

Unfortunately, I'd had my two top wisdom teeth taken out years ago by the same dentist, and I was convinced that it would be that easy. Never mind that those teeth had already come out of the gum, and that it was just a simple matter of pulling them out. He actually gave me the teeth as a souvenir, which I have kept all these years because I love silly things.

My top wisdom teeth.

Needless to say, I had this crazy notion that my dentist would be able to cut open my gum and extract my bottom wisdom tooth whole and that I'd get to add a third tooth to my collection. Wow. I couldn't be more wrong.

What was supposed to be a 60 minute surgery took 3 excruciating hours. It was crazy because I had to keep asking for more anesthesia, (the limit is 7 shots, I had gone up to 5), and he finally gave up and left half the tooth still inside my mouth. He then sewed up the cauterized remains of my gum over the segmented tooth, told me to eat some ice cream, and let me go home.

By the time I got home, the anesthesia had worn off and I thought I'd die of the pain. (I kid you not-- this was *painful*). I couldn't swallow, couldn't talk, and the damn thing wouldn't stop bleeding. This pretty much meant that I was drooling blood, crying, and whimpering in pain for about 6 hours. At about 10:00 pm, I woke Josh up and told him to take me to the E.R. (finally!).

While there, they told me that there was pus in my throat, and why oh why did I have surgery when I had a sore throat? Flabbergasted, I told them that I didn't know I had a sore throat and that I'd been on antibiotics 2 days prior the surgery (SOP). Since I couldn't swallow, they gave me antibiotics and painkillers through an IV... but not before making 2 rather horrible mistakes whilst trying to find a vein. This was the first time I'd ever yelled profanity out as some moron intern made mistake after mistake trying to find my vein and flush it with water.

Luckily, my father arrived earlier on and he was also there to make sarcastic remarks at the annoyingly cheerful Ear, Nose and Throat doctor who attended me. Josh held my hand throughout the entire thing, and said that he'd never seen an intern (or was it nurse in training?) so inept as the first one who tried to find my vein.

Some pretty flowers to get your mind off of my horrible bloody teeth.

We all crawled to our respective homes well after 1 am, (I went home with my dad), and the next few days were spent drooling blood and eating mush. I'm not exaggerating when I say mush, by the way-- our housekeeper had to stick congee in a blender, for god's sake! I couldn't even get mushy wet rice grains down my throat. -_-

Anyway, so the antibiotics the doctor prescribed were much stronger than the prior ones, so I was pretty much up and about (and no longer bleeding, finally) by Tuesday. I went back to work, (though I still couldn't eat anything too challenging), and some abdomen pains started on the left side of my stomach. I went to a dinner event in the evening, but by the end of it I was already holding my stomach and groaning.

I've been hospitalized for my gastritis before, so I thought it was just that acting up because the antibiotics were so strong. I started taking omeprazole for it, but it didn't get better. By Wednesday, the pain was constant and intermittently punctured with slightly sharper pains. I asked my doctor/cousin over the phone if he could recommend stronger gastritis meds, and he put me on mucosta (which is supposed to coat the lining of your stomach). After going into the office for a meeting, I crawled home to work some more and pretty much wanted to die.

I saw Josh later on in the evening, and showed him some rashes I'd gotten which I thought were because I was allergic to the new antibiotics. By Thursday, the rashes had multiplied, were extremely painful, and my stomach pains had gotten worse. I called my cousin up and asked if he'd see me after clinic hours because I got off work at 6, and he was kind enough to agree. By that time, he was also wondering why none of my gastritis meds were working and wanted to see me physically for a check-up.

After getting into a tangle at work about doing OT (because I'm a designer and not a programmer, and we really need to hire a programmer to troubleshoot stuff because THIS ISN'T MY JOB), I finally managed to get myself to my cousin's clinic in Roosevelt Ave. Traffic was ridiculous, of course, and I got there at 7:30.

The examination was quite quick-- he told me to show him my rashes and when I obliged, he said "Well, that explains why your gastritis meds aren't working. You have shingles."

ARG. Shingles (medical name Zoster) pretty much explained the intense localized pain and the rashes (which weren't rashes but actually spots like in chicken pox). He said he was surprised at how someone so young had gotten it, but he said that anyone who'd gotten chicken pox when they were a kid is likely to get Zoster as an adult. Many things can cause Zoster, most notably stress (i.e. perhaps from the botched dental surgery? the idiots at the e.r.? a billion things to do at work?) and just being plain unlucky.

So he finally (finally!) put me on the right meds (anti-viral plus yay!painkillers), and now I'm finally able to function like a human being. The rashes are spreading and I'm highly contagious to people who've never had chicken pox, but at least the constant stomach pains are gone! And I've slathered calamine lotion all over my spots, and he informs me that they should be gone in 2 to 4 weeks.

If you'd like to read more about Zoster, please head over to the wikipedia entry here. Most people get it during middle-age, but if you're unlucky and stressed like me, you could get it when you're young. :P

Stay healthy, ladies! I hope this isn't an indication of my 2010 health. -_-