Oregano Oil or Antibiotic?

It all started harmlessly enough, I chipped the back cusp off my second molar and lost part of the filling.  Doc gave me the option of a $50 dollar filling repair or a $650 crown.  Well, of course, I chose the crown. Why?  Because I hate going to the dentist and the crown carries a five year guarantee...The filling had no guarantee at all (Oh, and I'm also stupid).

So I was prepped and waiting the couple of weeks for my gold crown when the tooth began to ache, first it was temperature sensitive, then pressure sensitive and then just damn sensitive.  I rode that bull like the fool I am and after a week the pain began to subside. The new crown was put in place, and with some polishing and drilling Doc tried to achieve the elusive perfect fit (for me it never happens).  Over the next few days the pain rises to a crescendo.  Abscess like pain, excruciating pain, pain that makes people knock out their teeth with ice skates, the kind of pain you can't hide from, you can't escape.  I was applying clove oil like I was basting an Easter ham. I tongued down Echinacea extract like a hummingbird sucking honey. Yet the pain increased, now there was a post nasal drip and a hacking cough.  A rasping throat that not even three bottles of Guinness could anesthetize.

I relented. Stuffed in my wallet was a prescription for an antibiotic.  By now I had flown above ten states and motored from Seattle to Vancouver and found myself ensconced in British Columbia on Whistler mountain.  The pharmacist there could not honor the prescription without me seeing a doctor, which required a trip to the emergency room.  Maybe I could hack out two days, I thought, until I returned to the States.  The woman in white behind the counter suggested I try Oregano oil...Said it was better than an antibiotic.  Okay, why not!  I'm a natural cure kind of guy.  I'll give it a try.  "Be careful." she said, "it's potent, the taste is strong...And be certain to take three eye droppers full a day for best results." 

Righto.  I give it a try. I eat wild things like this all the time, so no problem. My buddy Roy and I walk into a roadside shopping mall, just inside the door I load an eyedropper of Oregano oil and shoot up.  In a millisecond my mouth explodes with air, toxins, saliva and green stuff, I am gagging...I stagger through the door, grab the hood ornament of a parked car, bend over and heave the oregano oil, clove scented saliva, Echinacea droppings and all the vile components I mentioned a sentence or two prior.

I spent the third night in a row sleep searching sitting up in van plugged into the bowels of the Blackcomb campground all the while squirting doses of Oregano oil and clove oil, Echinacea and water. Come morning I skied, that evening I drank more Guinness and that night I doused it all with Oregano, Echinacea, Clove oil, Ricola and water.  But all the  hacking and spitting, sucking and slurping would not make the pain go away. The infection was generalized and in a rush to beat "death" we headed down the mountain toward the first pharmacist south of the border.  I filled the amoxicillin prescription and began my three dose a day regimen.  Three days later I was sleeping and the hernia producing cough was reduced to a nuisance---overall I was feeling much better. 

Moral of the story:  When you need it there is no substitute in Nature's Pharmacopeia for a potent antibiotic.  Oregano on the other hand has yet to prove itself to me.

(Two months later: As a follow up to this story, today I am going to a new dentist to have a root canal done on the now dead tooth.)