Darn it, I am sick of this! Some time last week, I came down with a nasty canker sore. I don’t remember what day it was, but I remember that by Friday, I was already sick of it. We took the kids to the county fair and the demolition derby on Friday, which was great fun, but I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t enjoy the fair food in the slightest. In fact, the location and intensity of the pain has kept me from enjoying many of my favorite activities since last week – talking, singing, eating, drinking, even smiling… THIS SUCKS! I’ve never had a canker sore this painful! I feel like that big grumpy bear with a toothache from some old cartoon. It’s really hard to think about anything else, and since I can’t really do anything in daily life without aggravating it and causing more pain, I think I’ve been kind of crabby. I’ve been looking up remedies incessantly on the internet (and no, I didn’t find any cases of fatal canker sores, which is why I vowed to stop looking up medical stuff on the internet after we scared ourselves silly about my husband’s stomachache), and none of the remedies I’ve tried help. Since I can’t really eat anything, I’ve been living on water and Tylenol for the past week! The Tylenol barely works, so I finally went to Walmart yesterday and got myself some Benzocaine stuff to put on it. It works wonderfully; my entire mouth goes numb, and there is a substantial amount of drooling and slurring of words, but no pain. The only problem is that it only lasts for about 25 minutes. But for those 25 minutes, I am so high on my own endorphins from finally not feeling intense pain that it’s wonderful. But then the pain returns, and it’s almost worse than before I took the medicine because I actually got to experience life pain-free, even for just a few minutes. I think I’m going to have my husband hide the benzocaine from me before I become addicted – it’s really hard to stop putting it on there when I’ve had constant pain for a week! But I read that if you use too much benzocaine, you could develop a serious condition called Methemoglobinemia, among other things, so I’m really trying to limit that. I’ve read a lot of things about canker sores, but like I said, nothing has really helped. Experts are not even entirely sure what causes the darn things, but stress is the top suspect. That makes sense; I’ve had a ton of stress lately between family stuff (Sammie is back in a phase among other things) and just being so busy all the time, and I don’t always handle stress in the best way. Guess I need to find better ways to deal with stress than to internalize it, but I can’t deal with learning that right now – everything is hard to do with all this pain!!!
I can’t help but think what a great diet this is though – it hurts to eat anything, and I’m really surprised certain Hollywood types haven’t paid someone to discover how to give them canker sores just so they can’t eat. People are crazy that way; I used to work at a frozen yogurt shop in an upscale suburb of Chicago, and these rich housewives would come in with their jaws wired shut wondering what kind of fat-free yogurt they could still get into their mouths. Not that any of them were terribly overweight to begin with… But anyway, I hate this! I guess there’s not much more to write about it, but I have to say that it feels good to be able to “talk” without the pain increasing… Time to take more meds! YEOWWW!!! 🙁
I am so sorry honey. I hate to see you in pain. It will go away soon — and, now you have another reason to not stress yourself!
Ditto! I hate those things, too. And for a week! YUCK! Hope it goes away soon 😀
I get some nasty ones too.
Here are some remedies I’ve used and/or heard of. Note — I think some of these are meant to cause extreme pain, so the normal pain feels less intense.
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Rinse mouth with salt water or mouthwash (both painful).
Ora-Jell (Baby teething jell works too)
Shot of (choose your hard liquor) rinse and swallow (can hurt, but…)
If you can find it Aspir-Gum (Gum with Aspirin in it) or chew baby aspirin/Tylenol.
Rinse with Ice Water
And finally as a bit of a preventative, this will occasionally work, when you notice you are getting a canker sore take the recommended daily dose of any antacid for two days. This seems to lesson the severity of the sores, especially if caused by stress.
I’ll have to look, but there is a medicine that is a pain reliever/coating. It seems to last longer than anything else and actually coats the sore long enough to eat a meal.
I really meant for that smiley to be a big O shock face not the grin.. OOPS
Here’s hoping you get better ASAP!
As you know Lisa, I get a lot of canker sores and have had some pretty painful ones in my lifetime. The thing that works best for me is “Colgate Orabase paste”. You can get it at WalMart. If you put it on just before bedtime, it coats the sore and helps the healing process. Another remedy, is when you feel one coming on, take the vitamin “lysine”. Actually I take 2 of these each day (1 in AM and 1 in PM) as a preventative. It helps keep my canker sores to a minimum. I used to get 4 or 5 at a time almost constantly. Good luck! They are horrible.