all hail Alexander Fleming!
The moral of the story: When you have a root canal, insist upon a course of antibiotics.

As a first time root canal recipient, I didn't know this, so when the doc said I didn't need antibiotics, I didn't argue. I napped Wed afternoon and slept about 12 hours on Wed night and figured I was on the road to recovery. I was wrong. The pain was became increasingly worse Thursday evening and by Thursday night was so bad that even with Vicodin, I could not sleep. I called the doc's office on Friday morning and spent possibly the longest hour of my life waiting to hear back. They called in a prescription for penicillin which I retrieved and ingested ASAP. Unfortunately, it took a while for the drug to kill enough bacteria to reduce the pain, and I didn't get much in the way of sleep on Friday night either. Blissfully, the Vicodin began to prevail over the pain on Saturday morning and I slept much of Saturday and all of Saturday night. By Sunday the pain was down to a dull ache and I was almost human again! A few more decent nights' sleep and I should be back to normal. I guess all the sleeping should help get me re-adjusted and de-jetlagged as well, right?

Of course, I have to get work done for the crown this afternoon, so I could be back in PainTown by tonight. All I can say is that am very grateful that I do not have a condition that requires constant pain management - I don't know how you all do it.