<p>BCEagle, just out of curiosity, why don’t you want to be numbed for dental work?</p>
<p>On fillings and crowns, you can feel if there are any problems. If you are numbed, you can’t feel problems and have to come back again to clean those up.</p>
<p>I also don’t like the dead feeling in a part of the body.</p>
<p>Definitely sounds like root canal. I have had an endodontist ever since the root canal a dentist did didn’t get all the root out and years later, it flared up again. A regular endodontist wouldn’t touch it and I had to go to see the endodontist who was a professor at the dental school. She took care of it and it was over with. No pain. The time is longer, but no pain at all.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the helpful advice.</p>
<p>I haven’t tried calling the dentist yet because I really haven’t been sufficiently awake since Friday to do so. I went to sleep Friday night about 10 pm, with the aid of some klonipin and a lot of advil, and without having anything to eat, and slept for about 18 hours until 4 pm on Saturday – not counting the several times I was dreaming that my mouth hurt and woke up to discover that it was, unfortunately, real! At one point I persuaded J. that I didn’t need him to stay with me and he could go off to meet a friend and then go back to NJ to my ex’s house. He did go out and buy me some water, though, which was nice of him.</p>
<p>When I finally woke up at 4 pm, I noticed that the pain had decreased – instead of hurting all the time, it was now only a twinge of pain every so often. I even was able to eat a little bit (the first food I’d had in almost 48 hours) with hardly any pain. Then, naturally, I went back to sleep at 6 pm for another 7 hours, and woke up at 1 am. Still not really hungry, so I haven’t eaten anything else. But the pain seems to be largely gone. I thought maybe my glands were a little swollen under that part of my jaw, but maybe not.</p>
<p>So it looks like maybe it was all just residual pain from the filling after all. Unusual, perhaps, but then again, I’ve had so many doctors tell me things like “that’s very unusual; we’ve never seen anything like that before,” when I have one complication or another, that nothing of this kind surprises me anymore. It’s a little depressing to think that I’m that vulnerable to medical complications and difficult recoveries, even from an inconsequential little filling of a cracked tooth, never mind what happens to me every time I have anything resembling major surgery of any kind. But it’s not surprising. So I try not to let it bother me too much, or I’d be completely non-functional by now. </p>
<p>I think the dentist suggested doing the filling without novocaine because from her viewpoint, all she had to do was take off a couple of layers of enamel, and why not wait to see if it hurt before administering anything. I declined because I have no objection whatsoever to painkillers (the more the better!), and the one time I did try to let her do something like that without novocaine it was so immediately and excruciatingly painful that I almost jumped out of my chair. No thank you; once was enough to try anything like that!</p>
<p>It wasn’t the pain from the root canal I was concerned about, btw; the “ugh” was the thought of how much time it would take, and, possibly, how many appointments I’d have to make requiring me to take partial days off from work. I already get enough comments from the people I work for to the effect of “you’re sick more than anyone I’ve ever heard of; you take more sick days than anyone; I have health problems of my own and I haven’t missed a day of work in 20 years,” etc., etc., etc. I don’t enjoy hearing that kind of thing. I’m not a malingerer.</p>
<p>I just hope I feel well enough tomorrow (I mean later today!), and the pain continues to be sufficiently diminished, that I can get at least some of the work done that I simply couldn’t do on Friday because my tooth hurt so much, and so continuously, that I couldn’t think straight. </p>
<p>Maybe my appetite will even return. I feel like I’ve barely eaten anything since this all started nearly two weeks ago. A great way to lose weight, I suppose, if that were something I wanted to do.</p>
<p>Maybe I won’t even need to call the dentist before Monday, if at all.</p>
<p>Time to go back to sleep!</p>
<p>Glad to hear it’s improved, Donna. Now just take some Tylenol and have food like soup or a milkshake or whatever liquid-y food works for you. You don’t want to chomp down on your teeth quite yet.</p>
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<p>Despite having lost 30 lbs, I still have 10 more that I would be happy to send you. :D</p>
<p>Glad you are feeling better. That sounded like a nasty episode.</p>
<p>Donna - root canals are typically just two visits now. One for the root canal and fitting of the temporary crown and the second for the placement of the permanent crown (which is a shorter visit than the first).</p>
<p>But add in travel time if your dentist is not close, and yes, you may need to take a few hours off of work, but many dentists now work at least a couple of Saturdays a month.</p>
<p>Just have it pulled and then have a bridge. RC’s suck and often need reworking down the road. I had the same exact issues as you with the same tooth. Immense pain–no sleep. Had it pulled and that took 10 minutes and zero pain hassle. Best thing ever. Some dentists just live to do RCs to “save the tooth” but the old pull is an easy permanent cure and bridges are nearly as good as real teeth today. And never hurt or go bad.</p>
<p>Barrons - I’ve had many root canals and have never had one that needed reworking, not even the crowns many years down the line.</p>
<p>With everyone of them, I had instant pain relief once the root canal was done. </p>
<p>You make it sound like it’s a bad thing to want to save the tooth. </p>
<p>I also have a bridge due to a missing tooth because of my cleft palate. Bridges are a pain to floss around.</p>
<p>I think we’re conflating root canals and crowns. They are two different things, although they’re often done in conjunction. </p>
<p>A root canal permanently kills the tooth, so that the sensitive nerve can never cause trouble or pain down the road (a good thing in my book, I’ve had 3 of them). A root canal can be covered either with a filling or a crown, depending on how much tooth is intact above the gum.</p>
<p>A crown is a new covering for a tooth, and can be installed over a dead or a live root.</p>
<p>(Above is based on my personal experience, not dental expertise.)</p>
<p>Personally I like my crowns better than my real teeth. They never hurt or cause any trouble.</p>
<p>DonnaL, it seems odd to me that you were still having so much pain a day after your procedure. After dental work, my next-day mouth usually feels a little tender and bruised, but not the kind of agony you described. I"ve never had next-day temperature sensitivity, inability to eat, or need for major drugs and long periods of sleep. If it were me, and my mouth didn’t feel completely normal on Monday, I’d insist on being seen again.</p>
<p>LasMa - every root canal I’ve had has been followed with a crown. I’ve been told killing the root can compromise the strength of the tooth over time, so the crown is the most permanent solution. </p>
<p>I also just had my first two crowns this past fall, that weren’t due to needing root canals. I had two huge fillings that were so old and deteriorating so badly, that had the new crowns not been done, the root would have eventually been traumatized so much that I would have had to have the root canal as well as the crown. </p>
<p>Donna, my dentist told me that, basically every time you eat something cold or hot that causes pain, it slightly traumatizes the root just a little bit more, and eventually over enough time, the root will not recover and you will need the root canal. Now I’m saying all this as if we know your pain is coming from the root, and not at the gum line, etc. You’re having the kind of pain I’ve had, but I’ve been much wimpier when it comes to the pain. I actually drove myself to the ER one time in the middle of the night the pain had gotten so bad. I was visibly shaking from a lack of sleep and pain, and I’m sure they suspected I was illegally drug-seeking. But when I told them I had a dentist appt. scheduled in the morning and they called my dentist to verify, then they prescribed the Tylenol #3 (this was way before you get get ibuprofen over the counter). Stay tuned for the rest of the story…</p>
<p>So I got home about 5AM and took a Tylenol #3 with instructions to take another one if I needed more relief within an hour. So I took another one around 6AM, and finally fell asleep for a couple of hours. My dentist appt. was at 10AM and back then, I had been told I had a mitral valve prolapse and needed to take prophylactic antibiotics an hour before any dental appts. I already had the penicillin at home and the prescribed dosing back then was 4 pills an hour to an hour and a half prior to the dental appt. So around 8:30AM, I asked H to go get my penicillin and bring it to me (I was still lying on the couch dozing off). I took the pills and we soon got into the car (D1 was about 10 months old) to go to the appt. On the way, I started to feel nauseous, but was sure it was due to not getting any sleep the night before and the pain. Sure enough, I threw up in the car as we pulled into the dentist’s parking lot. Made it into the appt., had the root canal done and when the dentist was giving me my follow up care instructions, she said the infection had been pretty bad, so she wanted me to stay on the penicillin. She asked me how many I had left (so she’d know how many she needed to prescribe me) and when I pulled out the bottle from my purse, I discovered that they were all still there. I was very confused, until I pulled out the Tylenol #3 bottle and saw that there were only two of the eight left! Yep, H had inadvertently given me four Tylenol #3 around 8:30AM instead of the penicillin. Which is also why I got so nauseous and threw up and was so out of it. Of course then I was worried because the dentist had just done this very invasive procedure on a very badly infected root, and I had not a pill of anything prophylactically in my system. So then I was convinced I was going to develop some sort of infection in my valve, AND I was afraid to go home and go to sleep (now that the pain was instantly gone because she’d removed all the root) because I wasn’t sure I would wake up with all that codeine in my system. Of course, I was young and stupid and naive at the time, and I did obviously survive the ordeal… I did wake up after a very long nap, and I did not get any sort of fatal valve infection in my heart, but it’s always been a good story to tell about my husband, the Ph.D. chemist! Thank God he’s not a pharmacist!</p>
<p>Years down the road, I was told the mitral valve prolapse was probably a misdiagnosis (it was the diagnosis du jour at the time), or I grew out of it, so I don’t have to worry about the penicillin any more, either.</p>
<p>Yes, LasMa, it’s extremely odd, but at this point I’ve gotten sort of used to the oddness of how my body reacts to things. Right now (knock on wood) nothing in my mouth hurts anymore, but I’m still completely exhausted despite having slept for approximately 36 of the last 48 hours. At least I was able to drink liquids and eat a little bit today, which is very important for me to do, since not eating or drinking leads to dehydration (something I’m always vulnerable to given the absence of a colon), which leads to dizziness and exhaustion, which makes it harder to eat or drink even if I’m not in pain. Kind of a vicious cycle, and it isn’t the first time it’s happened to me. </p>
<p>I can’t help wondering if there was some sort of infection in my mouth after the filling, and that’s why it hurt so much and I seemed to be getting swollen glands. I know one isn’t supposed to do this, but I happened to have some erythromycin left over from an old prescription (along with an entire pharmacopeia of other prescription medications), and have been taking it assiduously since yesterday. (I’ve become allergic to penicillin over the last few years, or I’d probably be taking the amoxicillin I also have, instead.) Maybe it didn’t help, but it obviously didn’t hurt, either, and I have felt better since I began taking it. Even though I know full well that post hoc doesn’t = propter hoc, that correlation doesn’t = causation, and so on.</p>
<p>Bedtime, again!</p>
<p>At 60 I have known many people who has to have second treatments and other issues with RCs. It is not that rare for problems to happen. For a back tooth that is just worn out a nice new fake is just fine and will never decay or cause problems again. </p>
<p>[Endodontic</a> therapy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endodontic_therapy]Endodontic”>Root canal treatment - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>There are potential problems with ripping it out too.</p>
<p>I went back and forth with my dentist on this and had an appointment to cut it out. Then I read about the risks of pulling it out. During the appointment, I changed my mind.</p>
<p>teriwtt, I sit corrected. :)</p>