First of all, thank you to everyone who sent me messages of support and encouragement pre and post surgery - it meant the world to know I was being thought of and prayed for during this challenging obstacle. It's been a rough road, but I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel! Here's an update on what's happened thus far.
The day before surgery, I went in for a "Perio Disinfection" to get rid of all the bad bugs in my mouth and prepare for the big event. This was a two hour process that involved a lot of steps and a lot of waiting. First, they applied a medicine that bust through the biofilm that the spirochetes have built to protect themselves from being killed off. Then they cleaned out the biofilm and applied many more layers of medicine with 10 minutes of waiting in between each layer and cleaning. I had many warnings of "this is going to taste gross" - but honestly, with everything I've had during my Lyme journey, I've experienced worse! I definitely tasted some spicy clove in there - yum! :) They also used ozone and laser treatments to help kill stuff off, as well as charcoal for binding. Almost immediately after the ozone, I started experiencing a headache, which the dentist said was my body "herxing". If you're new to my blog, a quick explanation of this term is an adverse response to toxins released by the bacteria/bugs being killed. Basically, the bad guys are being killed faster than the body can eliminate them, so we're left with symptoms from the build up of toxicity. It's super fun.
The headache persisted on our drive home, and I also experienced the onset of a very stiff neck and an overall feeling of blah-ness. Thankfully, my parents were gracious enough to get up at the crack of dawn to drive me up and back, after driving across state to be with me for a few days. Throughout the rest of the day, my neck continued to get more stiff and painful, and my head felt a lot of pressure. This had me very worried about the next day - if this is how my body reacted to a "non-invasive" treatment, how would it deal with a very invasive surgery?!
The next day, I was told to eat well and drink no coffee. Thankfully, and surprisingly, I got a decent amount of sleep the night before - probably the best I'd had in weeks - which means those prayers of peace must have been answered! On our drive up, I took a few sedation pills prescribed by the dentist to get me through the operation. They left me little woozy when standing, and took the edge off a bit, but I was still able to comprehend everything that happened.
I pounded water the past few days, because I was really worried about not being able to get the IV's in pre-surgery, which are crucial to the healing process. I'm historically a super tough case when it comes to getting my veins to cooperate. Even during standard blood draws, I end up being a human pincushion - it typically takes several technicians to shoot their shot. The last two times I went in to the lab, I had to leave with nothing, because they gave up on me! I always thought this was just a hereditary thing, but the dental hygienist told me that she has trouble with all her Lyme patients in this regard. She said we all typically have very deep veins that hide when it comes time to pull from them. Very interesting!
They first attempted to get my blood for the Platelet-Rich Fibrin (PRF) treatment, which was super important to promote healing and regeneration in my bones. It took several attempts, but they were able to fill all the vials needed - hooray! However, they weren't able to get a 2nd IV in, which would have been used for the Vitamin C transfusion, which is critical in the formation of new tissue. So that was a huge bummer. However, they were able to inject me with the vitamin a few times, which was better than nothing!
Next, they extracted my infected tooth. They said the infection was so bad that it was eating through bone and had almost reached the next tooth over! Yikes. Then they got to work on the cavitations. My memory is a bit fuzzy on all of this now, but I do recall the dentist saying that one of the cavitations was really deep and she had to keep going deeper and deeper - that she wasn't sure when it was going to end. Double yikes!
Despite the mild sedation, I did experience quite a bit of pain. They couldn't use much Novocaine because of my MTHFR - just a few shots on each side of my mouth was all I got. At one point, when they were adding the PRF into that deep cavitation, I actually cried because the pain was so intense. They said that had something to do with the salt in the blood I think. And then all of a sudden I couldn't stop crying! It was like this emotional damn burst and everything I had been holding in for years was finally let loose. I remember the dentist confirming this by saying that I've been holding everything in for so long, and that she was waiting for me to have an emotional release - that she couldn't believe it took as long as it did. She encouraged me to let it all out, and I certainly did!
I also remember how often the whole dental team praised me for my strength and calmness; they told me many times that I've been one of the best patients they've ever had and that they wished more were like me. They couldn't believe my strength through all the pain. The dentist acknowledged that I've become this strong because of all I've been through over the years.
It was really cool that this dentist uses muscle testing to help determine what would work best for my body - something I swear by after all my experience with the medical world. Because of my pain - not just in my mouth, but my usual whole body pain - they also used electromagnetic stimulation during the course of the surgery, which really helped me feel better! The dentist also prayed over the surgery before she began, which I thought was pretty amazing. It made me realize that I didn't just "stumble on a random bio dentist" - that this is the one who God intended me to see. So anyway, six hours later, we were all wrapped up! They finished things off with some cold therapy, ozone and red light therapy and I was sent on my merry way.
The next day, I woke up looking like a chipmunk! Pictures don't quite do justice to how swollen I was, and that lasted about 5 days. The pain wasn't as bad as I anticipated, and I also wasn't experiencing any herxing, which was amazing! It was a nice crisp and sunny October day (my favorite!) so I sat outside on my antigravity chair, bundled up, and read a book for a lot of the day. A great way to get that extra healing vitamin D! I remember thinking, "this recovery isn't so bad!" and naively thought things would only get better the further out from surgery I got. Looking back, I think the "ease" of that day was mostly due to the Perocet I was given. It worked really well at first because my body wasn't acclimated to it. Though I did start to notice that when the drug wore off, in between dosages, the pain was quite a bit worse.
That night I had an awful case of insomnia. Which is bad enough on it's own, but when you're in pain it's quite miserable! After some trials, I discovered it was due to the antibiotics I was given. I hate how sensitive my body is to medicine - so many things give me insomnia, even things that usually put others to sleep! It also happened to be a full moon at this time which, if you've followed along, you know that this always gives me insomnia on it's own. Bad timing! I'm also a side sleeper, so laying on my puffed up, painful cheeks wasn't ideal. However, if I sleep on my back, my hands and arms go numb, so either way I was very uncomfortable.
Speaking of sensitivity to drugs, it also doesn't take long for my body to become desensitized to medicine. By day two of recovery, I could hardly tell there was any Percocet in my body at all. The pain was incredible - such a deep throbbing pain in all four cavitation areas. It kind of reminded me of having an ice cream headache deep in my bones. I stuck to taking the pain meds every 4 hours as instructed, but it only seemed to help at all in the first few hours at the most. I tried taking arnica to relieve the pain, used CBD cream and ice packs, but none of those even touched the pain.
After a few days of this misery, my mouth pain started to dissipate a bit. But then I also acquired this awful tension and pressure throughout my entire jaw, face and head. And nothing worked to alleviate it. Simple every day noises were like a hammer to my head, and our house is so tiny, you can hear everything from every room. Plus we live nearby a fire station and a busy street, so sirens and car noise can be constant. It made me wish I had a house in the mountains away from everything and everyone.
I also started getting quite nauseous from the constipation caused by the oxy - not fun! And the inside of my mouth was covered in painful canker sores. I already had a hard time opening my mouth or eating anything, but this made it almost impossible. The whole first week, the best I could do was consume some bone broth, yogurt, mashed potatoes and Jell-o. Most days I hardly ate anything at all. You'd think I would have lost some weight or that at least my distended stomach would have gotten smaller - but nope! Which just confirms my weight is a much bigger problem than what I'm eating.
A week post-surgery, I was out of my pain meds and still really struggling. Not only was my pain still quite bad, but my body started going through major withdrawals from the absence of Percocet. My whole body felt like it was on fire, I was sweating through my clothes, had horrible body pain, and an anxiety and restlessness that made my skin feel like it was crawling. It was beyond miserable.
The tension and pressure was also getting worse every day, so I finally called the dentist to get some help. I told her that I mostly stopped the antibiotics because the insomnia was so awful, and I got reprimanded for that. Dr. Min said that could be one reason why my pain is so bad. Oops! But she also confirmed that my body would probably need more assistance for healing, so she encouraged me to come in for a post-surgery recovery treatment, which I did the next day.
The treatment was supposed to last 1-2 hours, but after doing some muscle testing and finding out how much was going on, the doctor decided to keep me longer. I ended up being there for 4 hours! First, they did Frequency-specific microcurrent (FSM) therapy, which is a technique for treating pain by using low-level electrical current. The current is delivered to certain parts of your body in an attempt to relieve pain by reducing swelling and inflammation, repairing tissue and reducing pain. Dr. Min did muscle testing to determine which frequencies to use, and on which parts of my body, which in this case were from my head to my neck and my neck to my belly. Almost immediately, the pain in my mouth dissipated!
While I was getting mildly electrocuted (just kidding) they also used several rounds of red light therapy on my head and face. This is called Photobiomodulation, also known as low-level laser therapy, and is a procedure that uses red or near-infrared light to stimulate and repair cells and tissues. It can help with things like pain relief, wound healing and inflammation amongst many other things.
We also did an oxygen therapy called "Airenergy" which utilizes a specialized device to continually convert oxygen in the air into an active form of oxygen that the body more easily absorbs. This therapy has a multitude of positive effects including strengthening the immune system, stimulating self-healing, regulating the capacity of the autonomic nervous system, and optimizing metabolic regulation. The effect may be compared to inhaling a concentration of fresh mountain or sea air. As a result, it becomes easier for cells to utilize oxygen in the body.
Near the end of all this, the tension and pressure in my head and face finally started to dissipate. However, it seemed to move down to my neck because it was so stiff I could hardly turn my head. When I alerted the doctor to this, she seemed to expect it and let me know that it was something she would resolve with the cranial therapy, which was the last step. She also said that all this tension was my body's response to the stress of the surgery.
She did a lot of muscle testing to learn what was going on in my body and what I needed to resolve the issues. She spent about 15 minutes doing body work to my head, face and neck, and by the end of it my stiffness was completely gone. Dr. Min recommended getting more body work done with a specialist she trained within their office, who focuses mostly on cranial work. She said this person can do specific work that brings the brain back to a sense of calm, rather than the constant fight or flight that I'm always living in. Count me in!
The doctor also told me that she doesn't typically use her findings to diagnose people for anything other than dental issues, but she confirmed I have a "lot going on in my body" and thought it was important to let me know that the most critical issue was mold in my sinuses and my gut. I'm sure this has been an ongoing issue since we lived in a moldy condo for 2 years when we first moved to Olympia 12 years ago. As I've mentioned before, mold is tough to eradicate, can cause a whole host of issues on it's own, complicates problems with Lyme, and makes it almost impossible to heal from anything. So I guess that's the next thing to focus on.
Doctor Min highly encouraged me to look into fasting for better healing. I've done intermittent fasting before, which I didn't notice much benefit from, but she recommended doing an alternate day fast - which is to fast for the entire day every other day. I know fasting can be great to reduce inflammation, which my body desperately needs. With longer fast times, the body going into autophagy where it undertakes a housecleaning process, removing damaged cells and pathogens. It may be challenging, but probably worth a try!
By the time I left their office I was feeling pretty decent - the pain and tension was very minimal. But, unfortunately, it didn't take long for the pain in my jaw to become as intense as it was on day 3 and 4. I hit major traffic, too, so it was a pretty miserable 60-minute drive. And by the time I got home, the tension was back just as bad as ever, too. So disappointing! But over the course of the next few days, the tooth pain became a lot more manageable.
And now a few weeks into recovery, I'm getting a little better every day. The pain in my jaw and tension in my head are still there but definitely not quite as intense as they had been. The cold sores are healing to the point that I can finally eat a few things again, though I can still hardly open my jaw wide enough and I mostly have to chew with my front teeth. The act of chewing makes my teeth and jaw hurt quite a bit for a while afterwards too, so I still lean towards eating foods that don't need to be chewed as much. My stitches are slowly starting to come out and the withdrawals from the opioids are less intense and happening less frequently. I'm still experiencing pretty rough insomnia each night, and I'm still quite weak, shaky and tired, so my body isn't able to do a whole lot. Thankfully, I've been able to spend most of my days either laying in bed or in the bath, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to rest and restore. I've been catching up on books by my favorite author and have been blowing through movies and TV series' that I've been wanting to watch. We have some wonderful friends who have taken our daughter off our hands a time or two, and my husband has been super helpful to step up around the house and give me time to rest.
I've been doing a lot of detox support as my body is now dealing with all the crud that's been released. Infections in the mouth also hold onto heavy metals, so removing the source of infection leads to a release of these toxins in large quantities. Taking binders - like Bentonite Clay - catch the metal so it's not recirculated into my body. I'm also doing Epsom salt baths, coffee enemas, dry brushing, sauna blanket sessions, green laser treatment, castor oil packs and using detoxing foot pads each night. I'm also taking a lot of supplements to help with healing aside from the binders like Vitamins B, C, D, and K, magnesium, and probiotics to help during the course of antibiotics. I'm also using the Stellalife oral recovery kit, which has natural products to aid in the healing process.
Over the next few weeks I'll be doing more cranial and body work, massages and acupuncture to open up the meridians I talked about in my last post, which is essential for improving issues related to the teeth that were worked on. I'm hopeful that things will continue to improve and that, especially once I get the mold issue resolved, I will be feeling much better in my head down the road.
Thanks again to all of you who have supported me during this challenging time!
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