Antibiotics Aren't Helping

[fastvan]

My wife is 48yrs old. In November 2011, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. 3 weeks later, she had a mastectomy. They put her on a round of chemo that really did a number on her over-all health. One of the issues is what we are dealing with now. According to the oncologist, the chemo killed her teeth. She has a bridge in her mouth from a car accident 22 years go. It is anchored to her top 2 K-9's. The bridge is 6 teeth wide including the anchors. It is permanent attached.
10 weeks ago, one of her K-9's broke that was holding one side of her bridge. Before it even started to hurt, I took her to a local dentist. He looked at it and said he doesn't know what do do with it. He suggested I take her to the LSU school of dentistry. Got an appointment with them 2 weeks later. They looked at it and said they can't pull the broken tooth because of the infection starting to set in. Then they said once the infection has been taken care of, come back. He would break the other K-9 and then do a root canal and put new caps then fit her for new dentures. 1 week later, we returned. Come to find out, the infection has not gone away but has in fact gotten worse. So me gave her another script for another antibiotic. Next appointment 3 weeks later. At this point, my wife is in agony. The second round of antibiotics did not work.The dentist then said there is nothing else he can do.
Then we went to her primary care Dr. He gave her another antibiotic. Some kind of big ole horse pill looking things. 2 weeks later, the paid is starting to subside just slightly. I took my wife to the emergency room to try and her some kind of relief. They called in an oral surgeon. They said the infection is too bad to pull the broken tooth or to even mess with. They then gave her something for pain and yet another round of antibiotics and an appointment to see the same dental surgeon in 2 weeks. The infection is still there. They can't do anything.
At this point, I have spent a lot of money on dentists etc.. for them to give her antibiotics. All of my little bit of savings are now gone.
So, after 4 antibiotics and no relief, what else do we do? Keeping in mind, I am flat busted. I lost my job a few months ago so we no longer have any income. Any home remedies to kill the infection?
She wants me to just get pliers and pull it, but i know that would be opening another whole new can of worms.

 

[svor1988]

Not a professional doctor here...

It may be viral, or a bacterial strain antibiotics do not work on.
Chemo resets the immune system. It may be that she's infected with a trivial bacteria/virus that typical antibiotics do not target. E.g. they found a strain of bacteria from the dirt of flowers were killing a lot of people in the hospital (patients with no immune system). I believe there are many bacterial strains that chemo drugs target? A chemo doctor might know. If the infection is accessible a culture can be made, then they can know what it is before prescribing something random again. But professionals would charge $ for those services...

Home remedies I recommend for teeth surfaces are fermented pickle juice and fermented sour kraut, let sit there every night for pain. I.e. Let the bacteria kill each other. Those strains won't colonize teeth. If her infection is inside the tooth this certainly won't work, and I'd have to go with what her body is telling her; to pull the tooth. My chronic infections went away after that in my case, I was glad I listened to my body there. If you do it yourself leave the blood in the socket, if removed socket will still heal but be deeper. Make sure you got all roots (for canine there is just one). Dentist charged me $200 out of pocket for pulling it... I wish I'd have shopped around first for quotes.

moxidectin applied topically (a gel ~$15 horse dewormer from agriculture stores) will numb the gums pretty deep (don't know if that'd help tooth pulling). Tastes aweful though. Alcohol (beer/wine) would be the only other cheap OTC numbing agent I know of.

 

[svor1988]

Oh, try salt water soaking too. Ya moxidectin should work now that I think about it. Numbed my whole tounge with less than a pea size. Feel free to test it on you to know how it'll effect her. It often has praz-(something?) With it. They're both often given as dewormers to people in third world countries as they're inexpensive. In the u.s. they have something else that starts with an 'a' that doctors prescribe for worms, the main argument for it being it doesn't cause liver failure or whatever if overdosed on- but it's like hundreds of dollars for a single pill. So... Anyways. Moxidectin numbs amazingly but i'm not sure through what mechanism. It tastes and feels like a topical numbing agent i've had in a dentists office before as well (so it may be the same or some variant). Hope your wife gets better.