Sounds like you are doing good! I once had two abscessed teeth that I couldn't afford to have pulled (dumb now that I think about it) but not really knowing how serious it was, I let it be for a long while. Then I got what they call an irrigator and washed my mouth twice a day with CS for a long time, (I can't remember if it was several months or a year even...) but it stopped the infection completely so that when I had them pulled eventually, there were no problems as all.