BTW, Lortabs, aka hydrocodone, specifically, may play a big part in why I got so sick at the hands of a dentist.

I had a tooth pulled the sloppy way and he gave me hydrocodone for pain. I took the stuff, about 4-5 days worth. I had some leftover. I am not big on drugs obviously and didn't really know what this stuff was or what it did, except it made the extraction pain site feel ok, I got kind of high and there was no pain. I had never taken it before, I was stupid enough to trust the dentist. 10 days to two weeks later I went back to the same dentist and he started work on another tooth for a crown. sloppy work again, quite painful afterward. I went home and took one of the hydrocodone pills, probably i took 3 or 4, over 2 days. By the 3-4th day my kidneys were shutting down, I had major plastic allergy reactions going on in my mouth and, unbeknownst to me, also major mercury poisoning. Mostly all I knew is I couldn't poop and I was getting all backed up and very very ill. My hands and arms became numb. I began having difficulty walking.

It took me months to recover simply to a place where I felt close to normal and I am still working on getting back to where I was completely, which still is not an entirely perfect place, before the dental incidents. Chances are excellent I would have fared much better if only I hadn't taken the painkillers which not only numbed the pain but numbed and slowed down my entire sytem, in the midst of a mercury poisoning situation which literally almost killed me.

I wish someone would have told me the truth about painkillers. I may have suffered permanant kidney damage just from that one short incident. Everything seems ok for the most part but every now and then I get reminiscent slight aches and pains in my kidneys that I never had before which tell me, things are not quite right.

Never again.