Today WWP and I went to see Closer (read my review). After being in pain all weekend from sucking on lemons and trying to pass this stone in my saliva gland, I figured I could eat a few Vitamin-I (the doctor's pet name for ibuprofin) and then go out and suffer through a movie.
At the movies, I got a lemonade instead of the usual cherry coke and then I began to nurse it all through The Twenty and beyond. Somewhere in the middle of the film, I realized that I could feel a very rough edge in one of the veins under my tongue.
Well, I started sucking down more lemonade and creating a lot of suction in my mouth. I dare say, i was sucking more than the film (I'm not saying that it sucked, yet…). At the end of the movie I could tell that real progress had been made.
I lifted my tongue and asked WWP to take a look and he was completely grossed out by what he saw. He did tell me it looked like I had a rock under the skin in my mouth and that I could probably reach in and pull it out.
I raced back to my car where I had some "privacy" and a lighted mirror to completely work the stone over. Just when I thought I was going to pass out from the pain, I felt an enormous relief and realized that I had a rock on my tongue instead of in my tongue.
Oh happy day!
I passed the stone.
It is about the size of an orange (or with my recent past in mind – a lemon) seed. And it squeezed thru a tiny hole under my tongue. pain pain pain. But at least the pain is gone, now my lower jaw is just sore from the past 8 days of pain. Pinhead would be so proud of me.
Oh, I took pictures of it and have posted them here if you want to look at it. Some of you may not want to look at it, so I made it an extra link…
Tonight I should be able to sleep all night! Yay! I hope that I never have another one of these…
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Yay! Do you, perhaps, have a greater appreciation of childbirth? I wonder…. they say that once you have a kidney stone, you are more likely to get them again. Is the same true for these, uh… spit stones?
Yech!
Ewwww! It does suck to be you. I've got people all over the country (and NASA) looking at that seed that came out of your tongue…
I have also had them and my GP popped out in 2002 but now I have another one that is stuck behind the muscle. I am on tons of antibiotics and they are going to remove the gland. A two hour surgery with possible numbness of the lip. We are praying. Check out the websites below.
http://www.the-doctors-inn.com/newpage21.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?id=HQ01323 (some good pictures of the glands)
Ouch! I just took my 15 yo to the dentist today thinking she had an impacted wisdom tooth – turns out she has one of these stones. I had never heard of these before. She is in so much pain.
Hey, I know where you are comin from, I just had multiple stones in my back left salvia gland (April 2005). There were a buntch of little ones and the grand daddy was the size of a penny (OUCH). The doctors had to operate and remove the entire gland.
I agree 100% with you about the lemon, theres a big bottle in my fridge and it makes me quench everytime I see it. I am still healing with hole in my neck.
I had my salvia gland removed and i still am having pain that is unbearable. I had it removed twice. The first time I was having alot of pain then I would get infection in it. The Dr. said the gland was gone but I could still get a stone in the duct. I did, passed the stone to keep on getting infections had a test where they run the die in the duct then found out i had an extra gland which i had removed. I have alot of pain. Went back to the Dr. had a knot underneath my tongue he pobed to find a stitch which had worked its way loose.
Removing the gland is rarely necessary. There are minimally invasive procedures available (in the UK, trying to find them in the US as I have a stone and everyone here wants to remove the gland). Removing the gland can actually cause more problems and should only be done when you continuously have large stones that you are unable to pass.
The two primary methods (90-95% successful) for removal are intra-oral (find where it is in the duct, cut it out) or the basket method. With the basket method they have a little basket on the end of a extremely thin rod (0.5mm) with a miniature camera on it that they put down your saliva duct, find the stone, grab it, and pull it out.
Either method is much prefered to removal of your salivary gland. Particularly a large one. Typically you get a stone in your submandibular gland (back of the neck). You have two submandibular glands that together produce 60% of the saliva in your mouth – removal of one will cause a reduction of saliva (say hello to dryer mouth).
This is written as an FYI for anyone who comes by this the same way I have — with the exception I'm searching for people that do basket removal in my area.
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[...] say, I was in the process of passing a salivary stone through the glands under my tongue (see related blog with link to photos!) so I may not have been in the best movie going mindse [...]