Pain Relievers: These are the crown jewels of your dental kit. An easy choice is an analgesic/anti-inflammatory like Ibuprofen. This can help your aching teeth, or be used to relieve other pain. It’s also helpful to have something that dulls the pain at its source, like oil of cloves or a Eugenol extract. A drop of either of these can offer a lot of comfort. These can even be applied to a pellet of cotton and inserted into a cavity for a longer pain relieving effect. A gel of Benzocaine 20% is also an option for pain relief.
Temporary Filling Material: Dental wax or some other temporary filling material is a godsend if you lose a filling, especially a large one. They can also reattach a crown. These products can stick fairly well into holes in your teeth, and relieve the sensitivity caused by air hitting the tooth pulp. If your filling product comes with a tool, add this to your dental kit. Only use these products for emergency fillings. Pine pitch, tar or anything besides medicated cotton stuffed into your tooth may be difficult or impossible for the dentist to remove later.
Floss and Toothpicks: The floss is good for its intended use, and it can also be tied around a cracked or shattered tooth to hold it together. Toothpicks are handy for tooth cleaning and applying temporary filling.
Nitrile Gloves: You really don’t want to rummage around in your buddy’s mouth bare handed, and most likely, he won’t care for it either. Use a Nitrile or even plastic gloves, in case your “patient” has a latex allergy.
Cotton: At least 5 cotton pellets and 5 cotton rolls can be added to the kit to give you cotton-mouth like you really are at the dentist. They help with bleeding, medicine application, drool control, and they are a fine emergency fire starter. Curved tweezers are a great help, when packing medicated cotton pellets into cavities.
For more survival tips, check out MacWelch’s New York Times Bestselling survival books:
Prepare For Anything
Hunting and Gathering Survival Manual
How To Survive Anything
And if that’s not enough, you can:
Follow Tim on Twitter @timmacwelch
Take one of his survival classes at www.advancedsurvivaltraining.com
and check out more of MacWelch’s outdoor skills and survival articles at Outdoor Life Magazine’s survival site, The Survivalist.