[UMP25]

This one has me puzzled. Here's the scoop...

Sometime Monday (I honestly cannot remember during what part of the day, but I think I first noticed pain during the evening or something) I began experiencing pain on the left side of my face in the area of the lower cheek, around the mouth. The pain grew more intense as time went by, so much so that by Tuesday I was taking Vicodin every 6 to 8 hours. That helped immensely, but that schit made me loopy.

Wednesday morning I awoke to a scary sight in the mirror--the left side of my face was swollen. I looked like a frickin chipmunk or like I had a mouth full of marbles on the left side. So, I take a finger and start prodding around in my mouth, wondering if it's a tooth problem of some sort. There was no pressure pain on my teeth; that is, when I pressed hard against my teeth, or even when I chewed on something, the pressure exerted created no pain or adverse reaction. Even pressing the lower gum around all the teeth resulted in no pain. However, pressing the very upper part of the gum, the part where essentially the cheek muscle began, caused me to wince in pain and jump out of my seat, so to speak.

Realizing that a tooth's roots are high in the gum, as are the nerves to the teeth, I went to the dentist Wednesday afternoon, then, in an emergency appointment. He took some X-rays, not noticing anything from a visual, exterior inspection. He said the X-rays showed what he thought was a tiny black spot indicating a possible infection beginning in the root area of tooth # 14, a tooth on which I had a root canal done several years ago. Consequently, he prescribed amoxicillin and referred me to an endodontist for a more thorough examination. Just my luck that all the endodontists to which he referred me left town for a dental conference the next day and won't return until Monday at the earliest, so I have to wait until sometime next week to get in. In the meantime, I take the amoxicillin antibiotic.

Since Wednesday's dental visit, however, the pain has steadily DEcreased, and the only area highly sensitive to deliberate pressure by me is the part of my mouth where the cheek muscle literally begins at the top of the gum line. In addition to decreasing pain, the swelling of my face's left side has lessened about 75% since its worst point, that being Wednesday morning.

So why do I bring up the question of whether this is tooth related or an injury umpiring? Well, I started wondering why my swelling went down, but more so why the pain has decreased dramatically, to the point where I stopped taking Vicodin early Thursday morning (after having taken it Tuesday and Wednesday). Because I haven't yet been to an endodontist, nothing other than a simple antibiotic has been done to cause a possibly infectious tooth root to improve. Moreover, the customary and expected pain one would incur from chewing, especially hard food items, doesn't really exist and did so only initially briefly and mildly.

The big however, though, is that Monday afternoon I worked a D3 conference doubleheader and had the dish in game 1. In the middle of the game I took a foul ball off the facemask, off the left lower side, in fact. I use the Titanium New View mask with the wraparound pads. When the foul ball banged off my mask, it caused my mask to be dislodged, but the mask didn't fly off. At the time, I experienced no pain; rather, just the typical being shaken up by a fastball being fouled off into one's face mask. I've experienced worse hits before, including ones with immediate pain. This hit didn't seem at the time that big of a deal.

So, I'm wondering if in some way I got injured in that hit. If so, wouldn't the swelling, if it was, in fact, caused by such a hit, be accompanied by common discoloration--the usual black & blue then purple color? There was none of that. Nor were there any cuts or anything else that might resemble an injury. Of course, it was impossible to tell if such discoloration or injuries occurred to the inside of my cheek, because as hard as I tried, I couldn't see in there, even with the aid of a small, bright flashlight. It was too hidden.

I think one of the reasons I'm wondering, other than sheer curiosity, is that I really don't want to go to the endodontist and have him tell me that he must retreat tooth # 14, which basically means a cleaning out and a re-root canal. In addition to this reason, I just find the probability of this being tooth related difficult to accept, primarily because having experienced cavities, root infections, and related teeth problems before, those all had pressure pain and other characteristics this situation has lacked.

I'm sure that like me, there's probably no one here who's a dental or endodontic expert. However, deductive reasoning and a little common sense sometimes solve medical puzzles.

If the pain recurs or re-intensifies over the next few days, and/or if the swelling recurs, then it's probably tooth related. If not, then it's got to be just a freaky result of that mildly jarring foul ball hit.