Here is a little bit about the journey I’ve been on with my health…

In November of 2011, when I was just a few months shy of turning 18, I had all four of my wisdom teeth taken out.
I thought that I would get these suckers taken out and continue on with my life…after all this surgery is just a routine procedure, is it not? Most everyone gets these teeth removed, don’t they?
Little did I know the path I was setting myself on…

After the surgery I awoke to the doctor’s voice saying to his assistant that I looked pale and should be watched over a bit. Strange because I was completely aware of my surroundings and ready to get up and go…so the assistant helped me to my mom’s car. I went home, put ice on my jaws, changed the bloodied gauze in my mouth, and took the pain meds I was given.

A week or so after the procedure I was not improving and I had begun to have a pain in my lower left jaw and swelling that hadn’t gone down yet. My oral surgeon was out of town at a conference and his partner was busy so I had to go to a completely different person.
This new surgeon began pushing on my jaw and believed that it wasn’t a dry socket (which is a throbbing pain-my pain was deeper in the jaw), but she believed it maybe an infection in my jaw. So she gave me some oral antibiotics. I began taking these meds and got REALLY sick on them…so what do you think I did? I stopped them. Then I went to my oral surgeon’s partner (who was now available). She told me that I had dry socket and was going to treat it as so (which the other surgeon said would make the infection worse and could spread it throughout my body). We told the partner about what the other surgeon had said but she wouldn’t listen and pushed us to do the dry socket. Well, since doctors “know best” when it comes to our bodies (said in a sarcastic tone), I went ahead and got the dry socket treatment. *Cue dramatic music* Duh DUH DUHHHH….
I proceeded to get worse…the pain in my left jaw began to radiate down my neck, arm, and just about my whole left side! My spleen also grew three sizes too big (kinda like the Grinch’s heart…but not as pleasant). This is not all the “awesomeness” that happened to my body! I became EXTREMELY fatigued/weak, and had horrible brain fog.
At this point in my journey, I wanted to know what the heck was happening to me! I began going to the doctor on a regular basis and tried to find out what was going wrong in my body…
Test after test after test, doctor after doctor…I found out that I had MONONUCLEOSIS at the time of my wisdom teeth extractions! Who knew? I guess that having mono was pretty dangerous at the time of my surgery due to the fact that a person is supposed to be very healthy before having a procedure done. Also it was the mono that caused my spleen to swell (not cool).
So I tried resting my body as my GP recommended, but I was feeling worse as days turned in to weeks and the weeks into months. I kept going to him because I wasn’t getting any better, but he had no answers and rolled his eyes when he saw me walking in his office…I wanted to cry for I did not want to be a burden to anyone including my doctor.
He eventually told me that there was NOTHING that he could do for me. I was devastated. I stopped going to the doctor and tried to push on with my life…after-all I was a senior in high school and wanted to do all the activities my fellow graduates were participating in. Little did everyone know that I felt like I was going to collapse at any moment…

I will continue to tell more of my journey in my next post.