20240728 - Pain that can be borne

I wrote sometime back (a while back actually I think) that I used to have a very good teeth set but it has become more like a shark teeth set after the stroke. (https://mindofmystrokedbrain.blogspot.com/2021/11/20211125-my-teeth-set.html)

One more effect of the stroke was that I couldn't open my jaw much for almost 3+ years. I could Max open my mouth 1-1½ cm. So for all that while I have not brushed my teeth. Though I was not consuming anything orally, i still used to have a mouthful of secretions from the lungs and the saliva. All of this would become a thick fluid because I can't swallow. Imagine it stagnating for hours together. Apart from the small of a septic tank, the other thing is what all this stagnation would have done to the teeth.

From about 6m back, I have been able to open the mouth wide enough for a toothbrush head to sneak in (the electric toothbrush). I still can't open it wide enough to reach the back of the molars but I can get to the front of them 

Recently, (few weeks back), my speech therapist gave me a chew toy to bite into and develop the jaw movement. Yes it's just like a dogs chew toy and made ot hard rubber 🙂

When I did this, I used to get a faint pain at my back tooth on the right bottom side. It was not everytime but would pain sometimes, so I left it thinking it was probably the jawbone as it had not moved in years.

Recent few days, the pain became more frequent and would also pain sometimes during physiotherapy when I grit my teeth for doing something.

I thought I should not ignore it further (all the while knowing fully well about the stagnation for years)

I asked my cousin (a dentist) to check it out one of the days. 

So he visited me yesterday with his toolbox of dentists tools (the dentists mirror, some sharp tools to poke around, others to scrape stuff I guess, etc)

He got to the job and gave me the good news. I have a very bad cavity on one the side of the molars (almost a root canal types) and a matching cavity on the left bottom molar (a little less severe I was told)

While he was tapping and poking around, he kept asking me if it pained. Most of the points it didn't - which is when I appreciated the blessing the stroke has given me along with its curse. 

Absence of pain anywhere in my body doesn't mean things are not broken there. It just means I have been blessed with the ability to bear what would have been excruciating pain by disconnecting the nerves from the brain.

My teeth similarly would have been rotting for a long time. For anybody else normal, they would have been screaming with pain by now. 

But not me. I am privileged that I am blessed with pain and give the ability to not feel the pain and bear it. 

PS: I still have to figure out what to do next because I still can't open my jaw wide enough to get it properly worked on and I can't have the cleaning/drilling thing dentists use as it jets out water as well which will go straight through my wind pipe....