Dry socket experience

This is something that I didn't know whether or not I should bring up, but decided I would. We are now back-tracking to my teeth extractions in January 2013.

It all went fine, as you can read about here. But then in the evening of the day following the extractions, my face started to hurt. It was just a dull ache. I text my work colleague who had recently had a tooth out and asked if she had experienced this? She said no. Oh dear I thought. I had planned on going back to work the following day (Friday) but felt so awful Thursday evening, I couldn't even think about going in. Friday the pain just got worse. I thought "Maybe this just happens and it will go away again as quickly as it started...?" 

It didn't. 

It just got worse. Saturday was absolute hell. I have honestly never been in so much pain. My bottom jaw was just throbbing and the pain just pierced through my jaw. It wasn't taken off by normal painkillers that you can buy (paracetamol + ibuprofen) that I was taking regularly every 4 hours. I was just lying on the sofa with a hot water bottle to my face to try and ease the pain. I was then searching the Internet to see if I could find out what was happening to me. What I found out was that I was suffering from a thing called "Dry Socket". 

When I had the teeth out they all seemed to clot fine, except one at the bottom. That naughty one started bleeding again the evening of my extractions. I think the clot must had been dislodged and then the dry socket happen. Blooming annoying. So I had a weekend of hell. By Sunday I was so miserable that I honestly felt like throwing myself under a bus. Not good. So it was straight back to the Dentist on Monday morning, where he diagnosed dry socket and prescribed a course of antibiotics. 

Not a fun experience all in all, and after I'd done so well going through the extractions which is what I was dreading, the dry socket to follow was a tad mean. 

I swore after all this that I was not going to be having any more teeth taken out.

My advice to anyone having tooth extractions: If your face starts to hurt a day after the procedure, don't leave it all weekend before going back to your dentist for help (like I did)!

Have you had a dry socket?