My horrendous tooth extraction

Last updated on Fri, 21st Oct 2022

A little under two weeks ago I had a molar tooth surgically extracted, and I’ve been as sick as a dog ever since.

What now follows is a self-indulgent wallowing blog post about pain, drugs, and bowel movements (or the lack thereof). If you prefer not to read my tales of woe, please feel free to skip this post – which doesn’t really have much to do with weight loss.

The surgical tooth extraction was tough enough. The oral surgeon had given me lots of local anaesthetic, but every time she tried to pull at the tooth I could still feel sharp pain in my gums. She had told me to stop her if the pain was too much, which I did a number of times. But in the end I realised that if I kept stopping her we’d never finish, so I just decided to accept the pain and let her carry on.

Eventually, after a pretty stressful and painful hour in the dentist’s chair, I left the surgery with a bunch of instruction and a prescription for a whole load of drugs:

  • Amoxicillin – an antibiotic to help treat any infection
  • Solpadeine Plus – a pain killer with paracetamol and codeine
  • Ponstan / Mefac – a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug

I woke the next morning with what can only be described as a hangover. I hadn’t been drinking alcohol, but it felt like I’d had a really heavy night. My jaw wasn’t hurting that much, but I had a splitting headache, felt lightheaded, dizzy, weak, and had no appetite.

Yet somehow, in my befuddled state, I still managed to jump on my bike and cycle along to my Slimming World group for a weigh-in (thankfully there was no class that day) – where I got to my 2-stone target!

I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa, trying to force enough food into me in order to take my pills.

I just wanted to sleep all the time, to escape feeling so shit!

The next day was the same. I tried to put a brave face on things as we had a booking for a night away in a spar hotel for that night. But I still felt rotten, and didn’t really get to enjoy the trip as planned.

I got a massage treatment, and ended up falling asleep during it. And I also couldn’t finish my dinner or breakfast the next day.

The next couple of days were much the same. I would wake every morning – often after a 9-10 hour sleep – feeling dreadful. And if anything the pain was getting worse! So eventually, after 4 days of torture, I decided that I needed help from my oral surgeon.

I had to drive 45 minutes across town to where she was practising that day, and sit in a stuffy waiting room for an hour and a half until she had time to see me between appointments, but eventually I got in to see her. I explained all the pain I was still in, and all my other symptoms, and she responded by saying that I seemed to have an infection deep within my gums and she gave me another prescription for:

  • Flagyl – another antibiotic
  • Tylenol – with a much higher codeine dose (30mg per tablet) than the Solpadeine Plus (8mg per tablet)
  • More Mefac pills

Over the next few days the Flagyl seemed to do the trick of dealing with the infection and reduced the pain. But I’ve continued to suffer with the other symptoms: the tireness, dizziness, and lethargy. But add to that I now had bad constipation – I’m assuming from all the codeine.

About a week after the tooth came out, I weighted myself at home, and I was up about 10 lbs! Mainly because I hadn’t has a proper bowel movement all week!

There was no point going to my next Slimming World group. I was so bunged up I would have recorded a huge gain, and I’m not sure I had the mental capacity to sit through an entire class!

I ended being off work for an entire week. I’m now back in the office, but for the last 3 days I’ve been far from well. I can’t cycle to work as usual, and I constantly feel tired. I’m not sure whether I continuing to have some kind of reaction against the antibiotics or the painkillers. But at least since I finished taking the antibiotics and painkillers a couple of days ago my digestive system has been getting back to normal.

I’ve had 3 good poos in the last 24 hours, and it feels like I’ve lost about a stone in weight off the back of it! However, my appetite is still messed up, and many of the good healthy foods make me feel nauseous – and I only want to eat all the bad stuff like bread and chocolate.

A friend has suggested I might be going through codeine withdrawal, because I was on such a high dose of it there for about a week. And it is meant to be addictive stuff – that’s why the pharmacist gives you the 3rd degree when you try to buy it over the counter. So maybe my codeine come-down is the reason I still feel so bad.

Either way I’ve had enough of this shit, and I just want to feel well again.

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