Davey (Austin, Tx) on 12/04/2014

I was so proud of those teeth! They came in was I was 25,26, just when I was convinced that my top wisdom teeth would never come in. The bottom pair had come in years earlier, but they had only partially erupted, and are presently hanging out down around the gum-line in perpetual ambiguity.

They grew and grew, these new teeth, and to my initial delight, they never seemed to stop growing. They were my pride and joy for a little while, these giant, glistening white pillars.

At some point they were no longer something to be proud of, these honking chunks of glorified calcium protruding from the recesses of my upper jaw. They got in the way when I chewed my food, slowly grinding away on the lower teeth that couldn't compete. First the left-top wisdom tooth decayed away to almost nothing, in a matter of months. It resulted in the formation of a giant crater in the back of my jaw, this after 28 ys without a single cavity.

I had no idea what to do when the shooting pain in the back of my mouth began. I'd been through an exceptionally painful ordeal once before, but this had occurred when I was just 6 years old. Were it not for a medical breakthrough just prior to the onset of my ordeal in 1988, this would literally have been a fatal condition. I spent a very long time in the hospital, experiencing a great deal of pain, and those are some of the earliest memories I can recall clearly (as if they happened yesterday). The abscess in my tooth was the first trauma that came close to reminding me of those early experiences.

I remember the first time I chewed up some cloves. I'd been popping pain pills for weeks, totally unlike me, which goes to show how bad the pain was. A friend of mine told me that they were able to clear up a tooth abscess using chewed-up whole cloves, and convinced me to try the remedy.

The pain was dramatically reduced the first time I chewed up some whole cloves and used my tongue to apply them to the abscess. The swelling and tenderness in the gum around the tooth also began to subside almost at once.

Over the course of the next week I continued to chew up whole cloves and apply them every two or three hours. By the end of the week the infection was cleared up and the pain and swelling were gone.

3 years later, I'm going through the same thing with the wisdom tooth on the other side. Thankfully, I know what to do this time- I'm chewing up cloves and placing them in the abscess, which seems to be a better remedy than clove oil to me.

Never, ever swallow clove oil, btw, whether it's from a bottle or from a few chewed cloves. Very toxic. Always spit, but let it swish around in the mouth for a while. You will want to spit a lot after using clove a dental antiseptic/ analgesic. Do it, then drink plenty of water a little while after you are done spitting.