Bryanna,

No I actually never got to see him for a post operative visit. He just diagnosed me through the phone, but I'm pretty sure his diagnosis on the infection was correct. I went to a dentist in my hometown a few days after the surgery, but before the infection who recommended that if I wasn't better by this previous Monday to go back and see the oral surgeon. Every time I call down there, his nurse answers and just leaves him a note and sometimes he will call me back himself and other times he will just leave his nurse a note, and she'll call me back and tell me what he said. At this point I'm just beyond ready for all of this to be over with. I'm going to call tomorrow and be pretty intent on wanting to come down there and see him again because after 19 days I feel like I shouldn't still be feeling like this. The only reason I haven't been more urgent to try to make it back down there this past week is because I just started this new internship that I landed for the summer on this past Tuesday, and I didn't want to have to skip a day of work on my first week.

I'm going to take your advice and limit the peridex usage to maybe once or twice per day. I think that it and the antibiotics have just about ran their course anyways because I think my infection has all but gone away. My swelling has decreased to a minimal amount and I'm no longer able to push any puss out of the wound like I used to be able to. I do however have this kind of like hardened raised bump that I can feel by pressing my fingers against my cheek along my jawbone. Is that just left over residue from all of the swelling?

The thing that is confusing me so much is that since the infection seems to be noticeably almost gone, and the sockets are getting better and everything then why in the world am I still in so much pain?? It seriously seems like all of my teeth in the back of my mouth are aching nonstop still and the only thing I can think of that it might be is that they're moving or something. It also doesn't explain why my top teeth hurt so much as well. You would think that since the complications have been on the bottom of my mouth that it would be those that are having the problems. Like I said my teeth have noticeably shifted since after the surgery. I have a gap on top that I had before braces that's noticeably coming back much worse than before the surgery, and my teeth don't fit together the way that they did before I had this operation either. I feel like my bite has gotten much worse and doesn't fit together near as well as before either.

I hate having to take this tylenol, but without it my teeth ache so bad that I'm literally just miserable. I'm trying to space it out each time to 6 hours so that maybe I can cut back to 2,000 mg a day, but every time I get around 4 and half to 5 hours the pain just comes back full force, and I'm left with no choice but to take some more. I'm just becoming absolutely desperate for this whole situation to get better and resolve itself. It's literally ruining my quality of life. If I would have known that my recovery was going to be anything like this then I would have never had this surgery done in the first place. This has just been the worst experience ever.