Tuesday, May 3, 2011

And the tooth shall set you free.

 Forgive me for indulging in the pun.  It just seemed to perfect for the situation to pass up.  Something started a week ago that is quite possibly a small pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel.  At this point any step forward is extremely encouraging.   I haven't seen any real change in a while and hence haven't even been able to come up with a blog entry.

I have to start with the saga of the tooth.   When I first got married and moved to Mexico, I discovered a small cavity in a lower premolar.  I didn't speak Spanish, didn't know my way around.  So I was dependant on my husband for information.  At that point he excitedly told me about how amazed he was that his dentist actually washed his instruments between patients.  Like washed, in the sink.  Needless to say I freaked out and refused to go until I found someone who sterilized their instruments.  Now, I have a good dentist who has modern equipment and more recent training....but I met her a few years too late. 

Meanwhile I waited until a trip to Oregon to see my uncle, the family dentist.  He chewed me out for having waited and had to put in a very deep filling.  It hurt me terribly for days afterwards.  The only thing that pulled me out of that was hand fulls of alfalfa pills.  So I made it with that filling for a few more years.  It started to hurt me on and off and finally I broke down and went to a dentist at home (better than the guy who rinsed his instruments, but still not so great) who did a root canal and told me that the infection was quite bad in there. 

A few years later, all of the sudden a whole bunch of tooth just fell off the front of it.  Oh, and it was hurting me again.  Well, the dentist I went to (in Mx) told me that there was no way that was hurting me because it was a dead tooth, therefore it must be the gums.  He also just packed a whole bunch of filling material onto the tooth to hold it together.  This is an important detail because now it turns out that the pain was because of a new cavity that had eaten under the tooth and down the root canal material and into the bone!  So when I said it hurt, I wasn't just imagining it. 

So a few years down the road now,  I went in to my uncle and we were looking at one cavity that I can see and I mentioned that maybe they should x-ray that tooth and see what they see. Well, what he saw was that it had to come out right that moment and that it had been causing infection in my body for at least 2 years now.

In everything I have read and heard in my short study of Lyme disease, this has been a repeated theme.  People who have an ongoing dental problem just can't get better no matter how much they treat.  Of course, for some reason, it never crossed my mind that this could possibly apply to me.  The tooth has not gone without a fight.  Even though my uncle said a large pocket of infection came out with the root and he took a layer of bone off to take out infection, I have been experiencing what the doctors call "discomfort" (but what really means screaming pain) for this whole week.  I did break down and start taking pain killers and then on Sunday we decided that antibiotics were the only choice at this point.  I hate to be taking those things, but I figure we can undo any damage from them later.  The point is to take care of this tooth situation and then go from there.

I am really feeling a lot of hope and faith that once my body is not fighting this constant infection, my treatments for Lyme disease will become more effective.   The ultimate goal is to be strong enough to go home and finish my treatments there so our family can be together full time!  I feel an anticipation in my spirit that the Lord is about to do something big in our lives.  I have no idea what it could be, but it will be good because it comes from His hand. 

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
James 1:17

 See, I am doing a new thing!
   Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
   and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19