Hi Bryanna,

First of all, please let me thank you for your kind advocacy. You are how I wish everyone would be with their great super powers.

I think I have an interesting problem.

I presented with some strange symptoms (parasthesia in both upper arms, easy bruising, xiphoid hurting, swollen superficial cervical lymph nodes). These are all weird new symptoms to me since I'm a realtively healthy 40 year old but with chronic fear of dentists (5 years) and historically bad teeth.

I also had what I thought to be rampant caries in my upper molar areas (three teeth connected). Based on my symptoms, I thought I either had cancer or a tooth infection (I read "Spread of Dental Infection" by Fehrenbah and Herring- Great read!!), so I went to the dentist since I don't have insurance and everything would be explained by it.

He told me the chips at the base of my molar teeth were not my problem since that can be explained by me grinding my teeth. Also, the chips weren't deep enough to reach the dental pulp.

The bigger problem was my wisdom teeth were impacted and one of them was destroying its neighbor so I had to get them pulled.

I went to the oral surgeon to get the teeth extracted and while I was waiting alone in the patient room, I inspected my x-rays. I thought I saw a fistula wrapping around the outside of one of the impacted wisdom teeth (lower left side) deep in the crevice and and draining through the base of the tooth through the jaw. It was almost like a perfect hairline fracture-looking thing. I mentioned this to the surgeon and he said that he didn't see anything but he wouldn't even look at the x-ray! I hate that some MDs make you feel like only they know best.

In any case, it's been 5 days since my extraction and my symptoms are all reduced or gone. So, I suspect it's not cancer!

Still, I was recovering as expected from the extraction except that I'm getting swelling at the extraction sites that went away as soon as I took two over the counter Ibuprofen. Also, I noticed that some of my teeth (the ones with the chips) were numb.

So, my two questions are:
1) Why would my teeth be numb?
2) What happens to the fistula
3) What would you suggest I do to improve my prognosis, please? Should I keep taking oral antibiotics? For how long? I've been on 500mg Amoxicillin 3X/day for ~2 weeks now.

Thank you so much and I wish there are opportunities for others to help you as you are all of us!!