The year was 2010. It was February. I felt really stressful at this moment to finalise my PhD thesis. Due to that, I didn’t take care of myself really well. What happened then?
I started to have a bit of swelling on my right cheek. I had that for a week or two. I didn’t think too much about it. Then, on one morning, I started to feel a painful throbbing. When I looked myself in the mirror, my right cheek was swollen. I started to feel something hard on the inside of my right cheek using my tongue. I didn’t know what the thing is. I brave myself to endure the late winter chill to go to school to edit some of my work.
I googled the symptoms and I came across this term “Salivary Duct Stone”. I know what causes it. It was my fault of not drinking enough water. I neglected my health. It was not a time for me to panic. So, I googled more information on how to get rid of the stone naturally. Going to the doctor was the last thing on my mind. I tried several ways to flush the stone out naturally. I did it! My salivary duct was a little bit infected because there was yellowish /reddish puss coming out with the stone. The puss didn’t stop for a while. Once it stopped, there was a hole inside my cheek and my cheek was still swelling and the throbbing still persisted. This was when things became unbearable.
So, I went to the nearby clinic. The doctor gave me a referral letter and asked me to go to Sunderland Hospital which would take me around 1 hour journey from Durham. I called K Ila and she sent me to the hospital. I packed some clothes just in case I have to be warded even though that would be the last thing that I want. Alhamdulillah, it was just a salivary duct stone. I showed the doctor the stone and he told me the stone was out and he couldn’t see any stone left. With that, he gave me a prescription to reduce the swelling and I didn’t need to be warded. It took me an hour and half to reach home.
This serves as a lesson for me: I need to drink enough water everyday to keep myself hydrated and avoid of having a stone inside my mouth. Alhamdulillah, I don’t have any recurrent swelling until now.