I'm now in the midst of maybe my 3rd episode with these same progressive symptoms that have yet to be explained. Here's how it goes. First I'll have discomfort in my right inner ear area for about a day. Then the gums around my upper right molars swell up. Then for a week or two I will alternate between feeling okay and feeling extra poopy (ie: slightly nauseous, kinda feverish, fullness and pain in that back of the throat/inner ear/deep inside my nose area just on that one side, FATIGUE LIKE WHOA, lack of appetite, etc) on a day to day basis. Today I feel like crap, yesterday I was good, the day before that I felt like crap, and so forth.
The first time it happened, probably about a year ago, I went to the dentist because I thought perhaps I had an infected tooth. He took a PA of the area, poked around in my gums and then prescribed a course of antibiotics thinking that maybe I had had something like a popcorn piece under my gum line that had caused the problem though he found no foreign objects on exam. The issue resolved in roughly a week. Round two happened similarly, though I didn't go to the dentist or take antibiotics that time. Now that I'm back into feeling the same progression of symptoms it isn't feeling like this is some kind of fluke. This "sickness" never occurred in the 35 years prior to jaw surgery so I'm wondering if it's related to the hardware in that area.
My hardware in the lower jaw was removed previously during two subsequent procedures, one was clearly infected and the other was cyclically troublesome but I was never given a clear answer as to if it was infected when it was examined after removal.
I'm guessing a cone beam CT is in my future, but hopeful I won't be going back under the knife.
Do any of my fellow jawbreakers have any anecdotes about upper hardware infection/rejection symptoms years after placement? Does my story resemble yours? I'm grateful for any help or suggestions, and if you had your hardware removed from the maxilla how did that experience play out? Thanks in advance
