It's really gross, and a friend of mine actually came down with it right at the same time. For a while I was worried I had given it to her. Or she had given it to me. But nope, not contagious. Basically, my only symptom was that my mouth was bleeding. (The dentist was amazed that I was not in any pain.)

As for now I got it, thenewgreen , I'm not really sure. The dentist and maybe wikipieda told me that it can be caused by stress. Here's what I think happened: for a while my gums had been a little sensitive during brushing. It didn't seem to get any better though so this caused me to be less aggressive about brushing instead of more aggressive. THEN ...

I got a new job, moved, and went to a music festival within the span of 3 weeks. The first two I'd say are stress factors. The third, well, it's kind of hard to brush your teeth with any regularity or effectiveness when you are camping at a music festival for four days. So I think that's my fault there. I think a combination of these factors exacerbated pre-existing less-than-ideal conditions, and when I came back, my mouth would randomly start bleeding. What made me go to the dentist (and I did not have health insurance at this time, because rememebr? New Job. Took like 2 months for it to kick in) was when I woke up in the middle of the night to my mouth bleeding and it took an hour of being awake and attempting to apply pressure before it stopped. I was panicked and crying everywhere, no one wants to lose their teeth of course, convinced I had something like periodontis.

I went into work. I didn't have sick time, same reason I didn't have insurance. I was afraid to talk to anyone in case my mouth started bleeding and occasionally would start crying seemingly for no cause. Finally my bosses came in, I spoke to them directly, and they were like "Go. Just go, take care of whatever you need to take care of." - One of the only times in that job where they were actually decent human beings.

So the dentist had to debride my teeth and I was on antibiotics for 10 days. On the 9th day of the antibiotic treatment I had an allergic reaction to the amoxycillin (broke out in hives). The dentist told me it was rare to have an allergic reaction like that at the end of the cycle and continue taking the antibiotic til it was gone. (I was freaking out - again - bit of a hypochondriac here, I guess.) He also advised me that if it was truly an allergic reaction, I'd find out the next time I took that particular antibiotic. I only had one or two more doses so I did finish taking it. However, I talked to my GP this year and she was like "Yeah we are counting that as an allergic reaction and I am never prescribing you amoxycillin again." I think we were in agreement that that dentist was either off his gourd or just saying that because he wanted me to finish the round of antibiotics (even though...it was potentially unsafe).

I wasn't even smoking at the time I got NUG. When I went back to the dentist for my check-up, things are looking good, thankfully I only lost a few mm of gum - becasue that shit don't grow back son - and my gums are looking okay. Definitely not NUG-ish. However I do think I have to constantly upkeep my teeth, there was a time in college when I was - let's say, not sleeping a lot - and when you don't sleep a lot you kind of lose track of when you are supposed to brush your teeth - and I went to the dentist around then and I had bad gingivitis at that time. So I think I have to be very careful. Now I brush 2x a day and floss.

But I really should add mouthwash to the routine it couldn't hurt.

So yeah! Brush your teeth kids!