She's come around, fortunately--she's agreed to pay for it. I think in this case she just doesn't quite grasp that yes, an oral abscess can get pretty serious. She's not normally unreasonable to the degree she was yesterday (like, at ALL--this degree of fuckery is incredibly unusual coming from her), so I honestly have no idea why she was being so awful about it. :/ Possibly because our insurance has changed and she was stressed about that (because what happened re: insurance IS total bullshit), but it doesn't excuse things. She's not abusive, and for the most part is actually a really great mom, but she's kinda questionable when it comes to medical stuff--she's very much a "wait and see" type, in regards to her own health as well. In fairness, I am occasionally a bit of a hypochondriac, but I really don't like her strategies here. It's the one area in which she's honestly pretty shitty.
All's well now--she seems to have come around and realized that it was an urgent issue, and I'll be seeing an ENT soon, probably tomorrow or Friday. (We would've gone today, but the car's in the shop for some routine maintenance.) The antibiotics seem to be helping--my neck hurts a lot less and there's a lot less jaw tenderness. The abscess itself seems to be getting smaller, too. Spoiler: tmi and super gross Specifically, it's starting to drain...which means my mouth tastes like disease. Like, there's literal pus mixing with my spit. Everything tastes like death. :( But I'm getting better and Mom and I have patched things up, so...all's well that ends well! :D
Try rinsing your mouth often and spitting everything out. Don't swallow it! Hope you feel better soon :)
Wow, that's... pretty terrifying. But also good evidence that you really were not overreacting at all.
Great news! Mom has come around completely. She now admits that I wasn't overreacting and that I made the right choice in seeing a doctor, and is even urging me to schedule a follow-up for sometime next week. She feels pretty bad about the whole incident. Part of the issue, it turns out, was miscommunication. I did overreact initially, thinking I had cancer or something despite it not having been cancer-like in any way, and I neglected to mention the jaw and neck pain, so she assumed it was just a mouth sore that'd go away on its own. Now that she knows more about the situation, she's realized that her behavior was out of line and ridiculous. Additionally, the antibiotics are helping a lot. I no longer have neck pain, my jaw pain is a lot less severe (I only really notice it if I press against it hard), and the abscess is down to half the size it was on Tuesday. (It still hurts and I have to be careful to not eat anything that might scrape against it to avoid irritating it, but it IS healing.) All's well that ends well! And @seebs, if you could change the "urgent" in the thread title to "resolved," I would really appreciate it. :) (I might post updates on my condition here but yeah.)
Glad it's getting better and that she's realizing she misread things. I've been an idiot and not gone to the doctor or dentist with these before and just suffered through them, but that's not really a smart or recommended course of action.
I'm really glad she's realized what went wrong and patched things up. This becomes, then, a really good example of the distinction between "parent acting in an abusive manner" and "abusive parent". She acted in a way which was abusive, then realized it was wrong and apologized and made good on it. And if this happened all the time, it'd still be pretty bad. But this is the kind of thing where reasonably ordinary people can fuck up and take a while to correct... But they do, because they care more about you than about being right all the time, for instance. Ask her whether she's interested in more kids, maybe? I think we have a lot who could use a parent who is theoretically able to admit error.
Haha, she and my dad have already basically adopted my best friend. :P And they treat any visiting friends like family in general. (They're just happy I mostly hang out with dorks and none of us ever cause any real trouble, I think. Hell, they're even totally fine with me having a little party when they're out of town later this month, because they trust that we'll be responsible and nothing wild will happen.) Basically my parents need to adopt a pretty good number of my friends, since I have a lot of friends in shitty situations. And yeah, shit like that is seriously abnormal for her and she owned up to it, and is working to fix it. She really does care a lot about me. :)
Update: Abscess has shrunk a lot. It's about the size of a large canker sore now, and also less painful than before. There's a bit of a bruise on my hip from the antibiotic injection they gave me, but I'm pretty sure that's normal, and it's only really noticeable when I lie on that side.
