Swollen lymph nodes

I had no idea until I googled this morning that there are lymph nodes in your face!!!! So I learned something new. There are lymph nodes behind the chin, one to the left and one to the right; mandibular, I guess. (Did I say that right, nurses out there?)

I have had sinus problems for as long as I can remember. And since I have such a high tolerance for pain, I don't have signs that my sinuses are getting "backed up" until they are REALLY backed up or I have infection. This time in particular I've not had any nasal congestion to speak of, just a little during the night while sleeping, but nothing uncomfortable. So knowing myself like I do, I started taking sudafed a couple of days ago to hopefully drain whatever was stuffy. Apparently it didn't work this time.

Yesterday had to be when the infection really happened. I couldn't eat because the pressure on my teeth was so great that attemping to chew would cause my upper teeth to touch the lower teeth and it felt as though I were being electrocuted. Excrutiating pain. So I ate yogurt for breakfast, yogurt for lunch, and yogurt for dinner....no chewing. The only thing that helped really was keeping heat on it. So I slept with a heating pad (on low heat) on my face all night. Not sure now if that was a bad thing to do, or if it would have swelled this much anyway, but you should have seen what I woke up with this morning. HOLY CRAP. My face on that side was HUGE, my skin tight as could be at my chin, red and pain! So swollen my lower lip was fat and poofing over the top lip. Took my temp I have a barely elevated temperature of 98.7 (my every day normal temp is 97.5)

Reading about this online, I find that I will likely need antibiotics, unless this goes down drastically fairly soon. Thankfully, just since I got up this morning, the swelling has gone down a LOT. (So maybe the all night heating pad was a bad idea??) I do hope it will be gone completely tomorrow, but if not, I will be seeing the doc first thing Monday. In the meantime, I'm not having near the pain I had yesterday and haven't had to take any Advil since about 4 this morning. It's 11:00 now, so maybe I'll get lucky and it will remedy itself. Oh. And I took a couple of echinacae when I got up. I haven't been taking it regularly like I used to, so I'm going to have to add that to my list of daily pills again. It does work for me, and I need all the immune help I can get with this stupid fibro. ;)

As I type this, I can feel the swelling going down. Just checked the mirror and, while it is still obviously swollen, it's nothing like what I woke up with. Yay!