You are not my dentist, doctor, lawyer, lover or bookie. You are not giving me dental, medical, legal, etc. advice, yadda yadda yadda. I will be calling my dentist on Thursday (he’s out until then).
Due to a combination of my reckless youth and my adult addiction to Skittles, I have several permanent bridges, implants, and fake teeth. One of the “fake teeth” is a place where the remainder of a broken tooth was removed, a peg was installed, and then a tooth shaped cap was put over the peg. This was about 10 years ago.
For the last week this “tooth” has hurt like an actual toothache would. It can’t be a cavity. There is no actual tooth under there. And the root was taken with it when it was removed. There shouldn’t be anything under that cap with nerve endings to hurt.
Yet it’s throbbing and hurts more when I bite down on it. The cap does not seem to be loose at all.
Whatever is left of the nerve - wherever it is - is inflamed or otherwise damaged. Your brain interprets this as an ache in the tooth, because it knows where that nerve should lead to.
What was happening to me was that even though I notice the pain in the fake tooth, I have a cavity in the next one over, on the side which touches the fake tooth (not on the top and touching the fake tooth, but completely on the side). It’s going to be a bitch to treat, since it isn’t as accesible as most others, and it most likely wouldn’t even have started if my previous dentists hadn’t been so hellbent in “saving” a tooth that for decades was little more than two walls around a hole.
Tooth nerves are all tangled up. The pain feels like it is coming from your fake tooth; it’s not. It’ll be coming from an adjacent tooth or some other tooth entirely.
My cite is that a dentist told me this when I had a similar issue.
I wish more dentists would tell their patients that implants are not necessarily permanent. They can get infected without any symptoms and need to be removed . . . at additional pain and expense. In my case I lost a full set of upper implants, and now have to wear a denture . . . what I was trying to avoid in the first place.
And yes, you can get a “toothache” where there’s no longer a tooth.
It could just be just gum inflammation. This can feel like a relatively mild toothache. If you haven’t been doing so, floss thoroughly around the area that is painful, including under any bridges (using a floss threader). Floss the teeth above or below, too. If it bleeds, that is a good sign (in these circumstances). Rinse thoroughly with a good mouthwash. Do this several times over 2 or 3 days and you may find the pain goes away, and your gums no longer bleed when you floss. This often works for me.
If that does not work, you need a dentist and it may be serious.
One possibility is trigeminal neuralgia. I suffered from this most of this year until I had an operation on the trigeminal nerve about a month ago. For me, the symptom was recurring pain in one specific premolar, and I had root canal therapy on that tooth from two dentists. The second dentist referred me to a dental pain specialist, who immediately diagnosed the cause (an artery rubbing against the trigeminal nerve), and referred me to a neurosurgeon, who confirmed the diagnosis and operated on the artery to move it away from the nerve.
Trigeminal neuralgia may not be your problem, but it seems to me to be a possibility.
So I was able to get in to see a dentist yesterday morning. It wasn’t my regular one but one in the same clinic. It’s a guy with a Swiss last name and a heavy German accent.
Try not to think about Marathon Man!
Anyway, after a series of x-rays and a full examination he hypothesized that either the nerves where the former tooth was grew back, and/or I have an infection in the gums where the former tooth was and the peg is. There is no abcess or swelling though. During idle banter he asked me how my Thanksgiving was. When I told him I was in Puerto Rico on the beach he said it was entirely possible I got some bacteria in my mouth from ocean water.
He gave me some antibiotics which I began taking immediately. This morning the pain is 95% gone!!! :)
Hopefully by tomorrow it will entirely be gone!
Anyone who’s ever had a toothache can attest how it can bring you almost to tears! Jebus Kripes!
