Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Penicillin and the dentist

This morning it looked as if the "ring" was fading. The redness round the edges had gone and it looked as though the skin might heal.

I wondered why it had suddenly healed. Perhaps it was the swine flu virus or the effect of fighting an infection in the teeth.

The best guess is that it was caused by blue cheese, as I ran out of Stilton in the middle of last week and had been eating it almost daily up to then. I had followed through the links on the subject, erythema annulare centrifugum and found a very detailed text book page. This would appear to summarise all the reports on this problem and there would appear to be limited links with salilcylate allergy or montelukast. There is however an established link with blue cheese. The site states that blue cheese causes a problem because of the fungus Penicillium. And a list of the drugs that causes the problem includes salicylates and penicillin.

Today, by coincidence, I finally went to the dentist. A series of sharp pains last week ended up in a dull ache in my lower back jaw. I used warm salty water and this seemed to clear the inflammation of the gums but it failed to remove the dull ache.Wisdom tooth, I thought.

My National Health Service dentist has gone private - so the bill for the day was not small. The dentist x-rayed me, removed a wisdom tooth from my upper jaw and gave me a deep clean. The pain, she blamed on food trapped in the gums causing an infection. She then gave me a prescription of antibiotics. I couldn't say I was allergic to penicillin. The thought had hardly crossed my mind - so I told her penicillin was okay.

The dentist, by the way, accepted I could not find a safe toothpaste or mouthwash. Otherwise, I think, she would have tried to treat the infection with mouthwash.

I also got my fresh prescription of montelukast. It's been that kind of day.

Tonight the ring is again inflamed. I think I'll have to put up with it for three days and hope it does not spread any more. If it does we'll have to add penicillin to everything else. And do without blue cheese, groan.

RAS

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to say Hi! While I don't suffer nearly as severe an allergy as you, my hayfever is the type that flares up with grasses and tree pollen. I live in the country and the hay baling is a challenge this time of year!

Stu said...

Have you tried Cleure salicylate-free tooth paste and mouth wash, I use both without issue.
http://www.cleure.com/Dental_Mouthwash.aspx?ID=grace

RAS said...

Hi, Sarah, and thanks for the tip Stu.
I've had a look at Cleure and will need to find out if I can source it in the UK. I think I'll check with the dentist also to see if it's worthwhile. However I noticed it is advertised only with
flavours - cinammon or cranberry. That doesn't seem to me to be salicylate free.?

Stu said...

They do indeed have flavoured versions but if you look on http://www.cleure.com/Dental_Toothpaste.aspx?ID=grace you will see there is an 'Original - No Flavor' option.
I have ordered direct from their website to the UK without issue, so long as the value of the product is below ~£16 (not including shipping, I order two tubes at a time) you will not pay import duty, my orders were received in 4 days.

garydrew01 said...

Good thing you visited the dentist immediately upon feeling some pain. I think that's the best thing to do. I remember when I just had my new dental implants, I felt some pain and visited my dentist immediately only to find out that I need to drink some medicine.