The Chicken or the Egg

I thought I was so smart.... Figured I knew what was going on. Knew what the cause was (just me) and the cure (just time). Not so.

I looked in the mirror at a sore spot on my gum. Nasty. I will spare you the details. Then I did what any good computer user would do, Googled  "Gum Sores". After scaring myself to death, I called my dentist and was in the next day.

Again, sparing you the nasty details, I had a tooth that went bad, died and abscessed. The sore was the thing trying to drain the poison. It was so bad that I am currently waiting to go back in again for the 3rd time to see if enough of the infection is gone that they can finally close up the root canal after already having it opened, scraped out and packed to try to get the infection under control twice so far.

Trying to learn from my mistakes I decided to finally do something about a sinus issue that has been bothering me for .... um... about 8 years. Turns out I have had a very long standing low grade infection there too! How long? 8 years???

Guess what! I bet you know. I did not. Turns out, that even a low grade infection will cause severe fatigue! Make you tired, very difficult to get anything done. Could be that can cause depression, or does depression cause fatigue? Chicken or the egg?  How long have I been fighting this?

In this case it was the tooth infection that was the huge issue, one I am still dealing with after 5 weeks treatment. I know that started in February. About the time I really started to have trouble with NO ENERGY.  But what about the sinus thing? How long has that been going on and how much has that caused me to deal with that I did not have to deal with?

Antibiotics, steroids and all manner of sinus fun stuff (as in gross and I won't go into details). I don't know where all this will lead. What I have is quite resistant to antibiotics and I have a reaction to the new really strong stuff.

What I want you to know is be proactive. What is very shocking to me about all this is I thought I was! We are pretty darn good about checking things. I did have a root canal on a tooth that was really bothering me in November. I would have done the same for the one that went bad. But it never got to the level of pain that the first one did. Instead it died and really caused trouble. And once it died, most the pain left! It was not until the infection spread so far that the pain started again, and it was mild.

It was the same with the sinus, not a big deal, or at least I thought. I am pretty angry that I did not fix this stuff sooner. Mad that I did not understand, did not ask enough questions. It would have saved me so much trouble, time, pain, money and damage.

If someone had given me this advice, I would not have thought of the sinus problem. I would not have thought of my tooth. It really did not seem like a big problem, but it was.

So please, if you are overly tired, can't seem to do anything. If you think you are lazy and want to sleep all the time. It might be depression. It could be a low grade, no fever infection, a tooth issue, sinus or something else. Likely a good idea to go to a Dr and talk. Although I would not have even thought of the things that were really the problem. But maybe you will. And maybe it will make a difference in your life.

I feel better. Just knowing a reason. I am on medicine and going to get several tests done and figure some things out. Would be nice if the pills handle everything but I am not holding my breath.

With the infections being treated, my energy and drive have increased dramatically! Still a long way to go, but at least I am on the right road! I might even step on the scale and see what damage has been done there.