So, for nearly a week now I've been experiencing excruciating pain in the lower left side of my jaw. I chalked it up to a cavity, seeing as I have a cavity that was found last year that I haven't been able to get filled due to missed appointments and scheduling complications. I was able to make it to my dentist today (finally!) and explained my situation to her, and suggested my cavity assumption and that I wanted the cavity filled today. After X-rays, my dentist informed me that my cavity was on the right side, not the left where I'm having pain, and that the cause of my pain is my wisdom teeth pushing against my other teeth. I have an usually small mouth, child-like really, and have no where near enough room for my wisdom teeth. My lower left wisdom tooth is partially through, only peeking through the gum. My top two wisdoms haven't started to come through yet, and on my lower right side I have room because a few years back I had to have a molar pulled. So besides that particular tooth, I'm going to have to have my wisdom teeth cut out.

First off, the pain is awful. It's like a pressure, really. A throbbing pressure, and it's like the pain is centralized in one tooth, but in reality all the teeth on the lower left of my jaw hurt. The pain comes in waves - sometimes it's manageable, sometimes I get physically sick. And the pain tends to worsen around nighttime. I have a few hydrocodone pills left over from an injury a while back, so I've been taking those every 6 hours. They don't take the pain away completely, only veil it to where I'm not in tears and it's a bothersome, bearable discomfort. But when I first started feeling the pain Saturday, I of course turned to Orajel, which made the pain worse. I then started with the home remedies - vanilla extract, dissolving aspirin, pressure point massages, dipping my water in ice water, etc. etc. etc. Nothing is really helping. I've really only had one toothache that I can remember, and that was the tooth that I had pulled, and that was due to a severe cavity that got out of hand. And that was when I was younger, and I didn't handle pain well back then, and it was never as bad is this is. I don't know what to do until I have the teeth extracted, I'm already missing college classes because of this and I don't want to put my education into jeopardy because of this. Any suggestions on how to deal with the pain?

Second of all - and this is a little off-topic - but I am terrified of anesthesia. I have been deathly afraid of surgery ever since I was a little kid. Just thinking about having the surgery causes me to have panic attacks. I know it's silly, but I can't get past it. And I think a big part of it is being put to sleep, that is a very scary part of it for me. But I'm worried about the surgery in general. Any tips to cope with the thought and the fear?

Thanks!
Well, the dentist that pulled my tooth out when I was young isn't the same dentist I'm using now. And I was told (granted I was only about 13 at the time, I think) that a root canal was not only painful and expensive, but not always a permanent solution. Plus I've had family members that have had root canals and then problems arose later because of the root canal/because the procedure didn't solve the problem entirely. Now, I am in no way knowledgeable when it comes to anything medical, so I don't know what the best course of action would have been. But what's done is done and personally, I feel that pulling the tooth was effective - hell, it solved my toothache haha. I don't know what problems could come about later because of missing that tooth, though. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify.

Secondly, and again, I probably wasn't clear with this either, but my dentist won't be performing the surgery. In fact, I won't be using a local oral surgeon, I'll be traveling out of town. I've bee