Trina D.

I had waited until after my dental appointment to travel to visit my parents 7 hours away. (Sepsis and Dental Health) Other than slight discomfort after I received my filling , I felt fine and the next day the discomfort was completely gone so I headed off to visit family. The next day I woke up and felt very run down and achy all over and my neck hurt but I suffer from arthritis so I just assumed bad weather was approaching and that I was tired from the long drive.

The next day I was running a fever of 104, my neck pain was way worse than it had ever been and I felt so weak that I could hardly move. My mother insisted on taking me to the hospital so I managed to go along. Once there they decided to do a spinal puncture to check my spinal fluid. At first they thought I might have had spinal meningitis since my neck hurt extremely bad. After an infectious disease doctor did more study, he came into my room and asked me if I had any dental work done recently and I told him that I had a tooth filled just before I came to visit my parents from out of town. He then told me that the test showed that I had gotten bacteria in my blood from the dental work and that it had attacked the closest, weakest point in my body, which was my neck (due to arthritis there) and that it had caused an abscess on a bone in my neck and an infection in my cervical spine.

My diagnoses was osteomyelitis with bacteremia (sepsis). I spent 16 days in the hospital with 2 PICC lines, to receive strong antibiotics 2, then 3 times a day. I asked my doctor if I would die and he told me that it was possible but that they were doing everything they could to not let that happen. To this day I don’t like going to the dentist but I know that not going could cause a problem too, so I go when I’m supposed to but I’m always worried about it happening again, especially since now that I’ve had it, my doctor says I am more susceptible to getting it again. I wish I didn’t have to think about it. I’m glad to have found this site to share my story in hopes of helping others and to connect with those that have had a similar experience.