My first tip won’t ease your pain, but it will save you some. I’ve seen it on forums that you should put aspirin on the tooth where it hurts and hold it there. I mean this is just stupid. Aspirin doesn’t ease your pain like numbing sprays. It is meant to be ingested and works in your bloodstream. If you hold aspirin to the inflammation, you will however get a cool aspirin burn, next to which your toothache will be of secondary importance. Whatever you do, swallow the aspirin, don’t rub it on.

The single most helpful thing I did, which was almost the only thing that could ease my pain was salt water. And I don’t mean go to the ocean salt water (although that’s ok too), I mean the almost as much salt as water type, truly disgusting stuff. Just sip some in your mouth (try not to vomit, you’ll get used to it after the 30th time you do this) and rinse it around where it hurts. My pain could not be relieved by the medication, but salt water in 90% of the cases completely dissolved the pain. As you would guess there is a downside. In the better cases I needed to do this every 20 minutes, but sometimes I needed to repeat every 5 minutes. Near the end, my experience was that neither the medication nor the salt helped, but if I took the medication the pain remained, but the salt water could ease it. Go figure. Apparently there is no danger to this, although I am no doctor, but believe me, it is not pleasant. Sure beats the pain though. Oh, and yes, it does sting your mouth and tongue, just rinse with water afterward.

The third tip is also a prevention type tip. Whatever you do, don’t pick at it. Sometimes its tempting, because a nudge here and there with maybe moves your tooth in such a way that the pain will be better. No it won’t. You could cause an inflammatory reaction which is very, very painful. Rinsing is fine, but don’t touch or try to move it ever.