Travel Tuesday: Jamaica

A Not Fully Relaxing Vacation

I was very excited for the end of the semester; no school, summer sun, and vacation!  This summer would be especially fun because my parents and I were going to Ocho Rios, Jamaica two days after I finished school.

The first sign of trouble happened the night before we flew out.  My parents were hosting their annual Kentucky Derby Party (which used to be a family fun pool party, but now that the kids were all grown up in college it was now an dinner party… with lots of booze).  I was the only person under 40 (actually, more like 50) but having fun watching the adults act like fools.  The only problem was that my teeth really hurt.

Back story, when I was a freshman in high school I was on swim team.  One morning during practice I landed face-first on concrete and knocked out some teeth, and ever since senior year I’ve had a crown. 

Recently, my crown had come loose but it wasn’t really bothering me.  During the party, it started to ache really bad and even made the teeth on either side hurt too.  I took a few extra strength Tylenol and was good to go.

Until about 1:00 am when I wasn’t able to sleep because my teeth hurt even worse.  Tylenol didn’t even help, and around 5:00 am I fell asleep merely because I was so exhausted.  When it was time to wake up at 6:30 I was a wreck, and told my mom how much I was hurting.  No way were we canceling our trip, so I took more Tylenol, my dad packed another anti-inflammatory and codeine, and were off to the airport.

Basically throughout the next several hours, I took multiple codeine because the pain grew more and more intense and the pain killer would wear off quicker and quicker.  Once we reached the resort, I went to see the nurse who gave us the name of a dentist in town. 

Needless to say I was freaking out.  I was exhausted and tripping on pain killers and they wanted me to see a dentist in JAMAICA?!  I was waiting for some ghetto, hole in the wall clinic where they would rip out my tooth and then be prescribed marijuana…  It didn’t turn out that way.

After a long wait, the dentist took an X-Ray and discovered that I had an infection in my gums.  I was prescribed some pills (no marijuana in sight) and told to not drink alcohol.  That sucked a little, but I was willing to do anything for the pain to be gone.

That afternoon I spent sleeping in the hotel room while my parents had fun on the beach and at the pool.  By the next day I was okay enough to join them at the pool, although I felt so stupid because my upper lip was super swollen, I had abscess growing on my gums, and when I smiled I looked LITERALLY deformed.

The day after that I woke up with my lip a little less swollen, the abscess larger, and no pain.  It was our last full day in Jamaica, so we decided to go on one of the excursions.  We went to a beautiful botanical garden (where my abscess popped and LORD was it disgusting and bloody), did a little shopping downtown (where I WAS offered marijuana and did not take it, sorry) and then climbed the Dunn’s River Falls. 

Quite the trip, eh?  At least I didn’t bow out of going on the trip… because we found out that my local dentist was out of town!  So I managed to have a fun (and interesting) trip, and I hope anyone else reading this decides to go to Jamaica because it’s BEAUTIFUL!

Allison Blonder is an awesome twenty-something that blogs at Take Me or Leave Me and can be found on twitter at @allison_blonder.