Recently, I had oral surgery, never fun to have a tooth extracted. But afterward, I developed a bad infection at the extraction site, so the dentist prescribed Tramadol. I was told by the pharmacist only two things: take with a lot of water, take with food.
My mouth was so swollen, I couldn’t open it very wide, so I halved the pills and were taking them 2 every 6 hours this way. By the second day, when I woke up, I couldn’t breathe. At first I thought Oliver (my 18 pound cat) was sitting on my chest, but when I tried to sit up, I had pain radiating down my right arm. I fell back thinking “is this it? Am I having a heart attack?” Although the pain remained steady, it didn’t get worse and finally I got up. Oliver was nowhere in sight.
All through the day I was struggling to breathe. I got the hiccups and thought I would die. It was so strange. I finally got off of work and came home and talked to Mike about how I was feeling. He was ready to whisk me off to Urgent Care- but I gave up believing in that place a long time ago.
Instead, I went on Drugs.com and read up on the medication that I was taking. Shame on me- I should have done that FIRST. The side effects of this little white pill are horrendous; shallow breathing, serious breathing problems, rashes with blisters, heart palpatations, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, blurry vision, coma, death. One thing you don’t do is crush or halve the pills because it puts to much of the drug in your system and can cause “serious breathing disorders.” So, how do you stop this from occurring? Believe it or not, I found out from a health professionals, I have to go BACK on the drug, take it correctly and wean myself off it slowly. Baloney!
It has been three days now, and I can sit upright finally without pain. I went off all food and started flushing my system with water. Not sipping it but chugging it like I used to do with beer at beer parties long ago. I still have the pain a bit, but it isn’t as intense and I think I am getting better daily.
The cats have been a comfort and except for Charlie, they seem to accept that for now my chest is no longer a sleeping spot for them. Charlie is Charlie and he is stubborn. He will repeatedly jump on my chest, I am just thankful that he is the smallest kitty of the bunch.
I think in a few days, I will be good to go. I had people at work praying for me. One woman told me the first day I worked after the extraction that i looked so pale she thought I was Casper! She grabbed me the minute I walked in the door, led me to the back room, wrapped her arms around my neck and prayed for me I looked that bad! Kathi even sent me home early because I could barely walk much less bend over.
You know we trust these professionals to do right by us. They give us pills with no consequence to the problems they might create for us. Sometimes pills appear on the market as the “end-all be all” for the problem only to be yanked later as causing major health issues. I wonder why the pharmacist didn’t warn me about ALL the side-effects? Are they that busy in their day that they don’t understand some people need to know about this? The only way I found out about the 48 side effects was by using the Internet. God help me, next time I get a pill from a health professionals, the first thing I am going to do is research the darn thing on drugs.com!