A cancer survivor's visit to the dentist turns into a medical issue.
PUBLISHED April 02, 2018
In July 2011 Barbara Carlos was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. A resident of Hawaii, she works in administrative support at a college and has retirement as her career goal. Music keeps her sane, as side effects of chemo and radiation linger. Overweight since childhood, she keeps trying to lose the estrogen-laden fat that her cancer loves.
A couple of years ago I had an abscessed tooth. I didn't know there was anything going on there because one of the advantages of neuropathy is that you don't feel pain. However, when routine dental X-rays were taken, the huge abscess smiled for the camera. I didn't feel a thing. I went off to the endodontist for a root canal. No problems there. I had no problems for two years.
Some of my nerves have been healing and I now have feeling or partial feeling in different parts of my body. It's not like before chemo, but it's nice to be able to pick up a paper clip by touch instead of having to watch my hand do the task. Over my lifetime, I have invested quite a bit in my mouth, so I am good about a dental checkup every six months. A few months ago, occasionally I would feel a twinge of something in my mouth, but it was so fleeting that I couldn't zero in on it. It seemed like a tooth was trying to send me a message. I don't speak tooth, so I couldn't figure it out. I went to the dentist to have the message interpreted. Guess what? I had another abscess in the same place! Again, I couldn't really tell because I couldn't really feel it.
Some of my nerves have been healing and I now have feeling or partial feeling in different parts of my body. It's not like before chemo, but it's nice to be able to pick up a paper clip by touch instead of having to watch my hand do the task. Over my lifetime, I have invested quite a bit in my mouth, so I am good about a dental checkup every six months. A few months ago, occasionally I would feel a twinge of something in my mouth, but it was so fleeting that I couldn't zero in on it. It seemed like a tooth was trying to send me a message. I don't speak tooth, so I couldn't figure it out. I went to the dentist to have the message interpreted. Guess what? I had another abscess in the same place! Again, I couldn't really tell because I couldn't really feel it.
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