I am very grateful my abscessed tooth was successfully extracted this morning.
The nitrous oxide had no effect on me whatsoever. Zero. The first batch of Novocaine didn't quite do the trick. The 2nd round of Novocaine helped. It went quickly and I'm glad it's behind me.
I'm going to go and lie down to read a book! I hope everyone is getting some rest with the holidays!
Take care! :)
P.S. If you are looking for something more to read, check out my holiday posts preceding this (including comment sections). We had an interesting power outage on Christmas Eve! :)
UPDATED at 5:46 pm:I just woke up from about a 2.5 hour nap. When I tried to read, I got sleepy and decided to put the book down for a minute to rest my eyes. That is the last thing I remember. I woke up having had numerous, vivid, frightening nightmares.
Just some background... I have sleep apnea and fibromyalgia. I
never get good quality sleep. When I had my sleep study to diagnose the
obstructive sleep apnea, they said I got
ZERO of the "restorative sleep" phase!
I haven't used the
CPAP machine lately (used to treat sleep apnea) because it's impossible to use my machine when I have a bad runny nose (which I have had).
By the way, the oral surgeon confirmed my suspicion that the abscessed tooth and sinus problems/other symptoms I have been having could definitely be related.
I'm grateful my "regular dentist" put me on antibiotics a few days back for the tooth infection.
Anyway, I haven't had a "good night's sleep" in... well, in my whole life actually. Even as a kid, I never got proper sleep. I've spent my life needing people to wake me up. Sometimes a ringing phone works. Alarm clocks barely ever work (even the loudest ones they make).
When I lived alone after college, I had
FIVE alarm clocks and still had a hard time getting awake on time to get ready for work.
I hardly ever, ever dream or have nightmares. Today I had several scary nightmares.
With my fibromyalgia, I don't get high-quality sleep either.
The fibro and sleep apnea were only diagnosed in the last few years but my trouble getting good sleep goes way back.
Anyway,
nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) was no laughing matter for me!!
It gave me zero effects during the dental appointment (see above). There was nothing positive or negative. The air entering my nostrils just seemed like when regular air gets pumped into them during CPAP at night to treat my sleep apnea. I would have sworn they accidentally gave me plain oxygen... before waking up from that awful nap.
They gave me nitrous oxide alright! I just searched the Internet. While it appears to be a less common side effect of nitrous oxide, I am not the only dental patient to have had nightmares after nitrous oxide. (I would include links about nitrous oxide but I didn't even finish reading the links myself yet... I just did some speed-reading, saw that others have had nightmares from it and started this post).
Anyway, the way nitrous oxide was described to me by multiple sources beforehand (including the dental assistants today) was that "people love the feeling", "it's relaxing", "it takes the edge off", etc.
With nitrous oxide (at least in my case) you do stay awake during the procedure but it is supposed to make it easier for certain patients than just having Novocaine alone.
I am
NOT one of those certain patients!! These nightmares were really bad. I am so glad to be awake. I'm so glad they were just nightmares and not really happening. (One example of a nightmare I had was a scene that was similar to but far, far scarier than a very, very graphic Grey's Anatomy episode where everyone is standing around in scrubs and then bad things happen).
Let's just say I am not one to be phased too much by the sight of blood but this nightmare was more than I could take without getting really upset before waking up suddenly.
I never want to go through that again!
As I said, most people who have nitrous oxide (apparently) find it helpful and pleasant. I had no reaction at all when I needed it and the nightmares afterwards (just now) were just plain awful.
While my reaction may not be super-common, it does happen or I wouldn't have gotten the Google hits I did from pharmocology articles.
Let's just say that I couldn't leave this post as initially written and felt compelled to write this update. Many endo patients I have met are more sensitive than most to various chemicals. Many other chronically ill patients are extra-sensitive too. Clearly I am one of those sensitive individuals.
I'll take low-quality sleep with no dreams and no nightmares over what I just experienced any day.
Please pray that when I go to sleep tonight this will not happen again.
This article was posted by Jeanne via "Jeanne's Endo Blog" at www.endendoat.blogspot.com.
