“how scary” would depend on your own tolerance for dental procedures, and your own response to anesthetic. I have severe dental phobia, and am very difficult to numb.
Having had one crown that turned out to be not such a big deal, I (foolishly) went to my first root canal without any advance pharmaceutical management. The first novocaine shot sent me through the ceiling. Subsequent novocaine shots did little. The whole experience was horrible. A dose of Dalmane the guy gave me before proceeding knocked me out pretty well… after the procedure was over.
Experience number two: I’d since switched dentists to someone who was very good about managing my phobia. Major work (some crowns) was accomplished with a stiff dose of Halcion and some nitrous oxide. As a result, the novocaine injection was almost totally painless, and I was happy as a clam to be in the chair. I tell people "they coulda chopped my toes off and lalalalalawheeee… ".
So when I needed a root canal, I went with an endodontist who a) has nitrous available, and b) didn’t fret when I said that he really would be happier if I took Halcion beforehand. Evidently, he didn’t find that many people needed that extra level of happy-stuff (that should tell you something) and was a bit surprised that I wanted it, but I told him that his job would be a LOT easier if I did.
Anyway - doped on Halcion + nitrous, I was only semiconscious during the procedure. I vaguely recall feeling a slight twinge, once, that very quickly went away. All in all, a very tolerable experience.
I did the sedation route for my one and only root canal, too. I’m hard to freeze, and after my last adventure in fillings with a new dentist injecting me about 10 times, me not freezing, and seeing the panic start in his eyes from not knowing what to do next, I decided that my dental work will all be sedation work in the future. Even with the sedation and the freezing, I still felt one particular strong stab of pain with the root canal (I don’t know if it was the freezing or something with the nerve or what), but that was it.
For the record, my root canal has failed and I’ll be going back for an extraction next January. If I ever need a root canal on my very back molars, I won’t bother - just yank those puppies.
I have only had one. It was low on the pain level. I’m not a fan of things in my mouth and so the procedure bothered me, but the pain during and after was not bad. I went back to work.
My take on the dreaded root canal…
The pain isn’t there. But the procedure goes on, and on, and on…and the whole time you’re sitting there with your mouth uncomfortably open.
I just had one a week ago. Worst part was the smell (brief whiff, really) of “tooth dust” and the odd sensastion of having a long hole drilled into the (front) tooth and then a rod inserted to check depth. It didn’t hurt, just felt funny. Really no worse than a filling.
I’m pretty tolerant of dental procedures, and do not have any phobia in that regard, but then I’ve only really had fillings (except for the aforementioned wisdom teeth extraction: I don’t ever want to mess with the nerve in my jaw again!).
I am actually a little comforted by those who have said that whatever pain might result from the root canal is better than the pain of the toothache: for some reason it’s behaving today, but I’ve had headaches every afternoon for almost a week from it. Bleh. And yesterday, after the dentist tapped and picked at it for 10 minutes? OUCH! I know he was only doing what he had to for the diagnosis, but damn I wanted to kick him very hard every time he tapped that tooth.
Oh, tell me about it: I’ll be looking at paying about $1000, and that’s with dental insurance (which, it turns out, is pretty crappy once you need more than regular cleanings :mad: ). It will also max out my dental benefits for the calendar year, so part 2 of the root canal will be entirely on my own dime (as will any subsequent visits related to the procedure). I was scheduled for a regular cleaning in two weeks, but I’m going to reschedule it for January so I don’t get hit with yet another entirely-out-of-pocket dental charge this year. Sigh.
I’ll try, but I’ll be going right from work: we have a big customer thing that’s schedule to end around noon, and I’ll be trying to get the meeting minutes drafted before I leave at 2:30. I should still be able to fit a decent lunch in there, though.
I will definitely keep that in mind!
That’s what I’m getting done: the back, upper-left molar. Hmm, maybe I’ll ask the endodontist his thoughts on extraction vs root canal.
I just had to chime in and thank Misnomer for making this thread, and thank everyone for responding. A few months ago, I had a deep filling. Not a whole lot of my original tooth is left. The dentist said it could go both ways - may settle down and not cause me any more pain, or it may become extremely sensitive, and that if it gets sensitive I’d need a root canal.
I’ve been dreading this, continuing to put up with the pain and wincing every time I drink anything colder than my body temperature (room temperature even). I’m one of those “terrified of blood and needles” people. The tip about bring Advil is a good one. This thread has made me feel a lot better.
mumbles about the unfairness of having crappy teeth despite taking good care of them
Anyway, yay! Well, as “yay” as one can get about root canals, anyway.
I had five in one summer. Each hurt a lot for a couple of days. Anti-inflamation pills, codine based pain kiillers, and sucking on shaved ice helped a lot, but it was still nasty.
For me, a filling is followed by a couple of hours of discomfort verging on mild pain, wheras a root canal is followed by a couple of days of throbbing but manageable pain, during which time I am unable to hold a thought for more than a few seconds.
You almost have to go in and tell them to extract - dentists these days are very pro saving all teeth, even teeth that you really don’t want to save. Of course, my $3500 root canal has failed, so I have to start all over again with an extraction, so I may be slightly biased.
Yair, it’s not scary as such for an adult. It’s just long, tiring, and unpleasant. The anaesthetic works excellently well with regards to pain (there will be little or none), but it does nothing to diminish the sensation of “some guy doing major building renovation works inside my head”.
I pass the time by actually taking an interest in what they’re doing. Sounds strange, but you can geek your way through it this way. See, a lot of the unpleasantness isn’t the actual procedure, but the boredom, the way that your arse has fallen asleep in the chair, the bright light remorselessly in your face, the fact that you’ve read every word on the Disney-supplied making-kids-brush-their-teeth poster seventy-three times, etc.
Frightening? Not even remotely. Painful? Not really. A shitty morning? Yep.
Of course, the worst part is that when I finally get out of that shitty place, all I want to do in the world is nip around the corner to the club for several cold, foaming beers, and then across the road for a bowl of pho. But you can’t do any of that.
In my experience, they will put a “dam” in your mouth covering everything but the tooth they are interested in. a dam is a rubber membrane in a metal frame. sometimes it will cover your entire mouth so you cannot breathe except from your nose. You may feel like you are suffocating. do not hesitate to put a finger up beside your cheek to push up the dam a little bit so it has a place to allow you to breathe through your mouth.
The actual root canal is pretty much like a filling, not much pain at all. Except that it lasts a lot longer, so your jaw gets sore from holding your mouth open so long. My dentist was nice enough to offer ‘rest breaks’ during that time. On the first root canal, I was too macho to do so (or maybe I just wanted to get it over quicker), so I told him to just keep going. That was a mistake, a couple years later on the second one, I took those breaks, and felt much better at the end of the procedure.
But a warning: they can get infected easily, because there’s not much blood supply around your teeth. Watch for that. If you feel any pain starting, or it begins to feel hot, call your dentist right away! Don’t wait. Because it will get much worse, and become very, very painful. (And that will probably happen at night or on the weekend, when the dentist is not available.)
I had this happen with one root canal (the other went just fine). It was so painful that I couldn’t sleep, so about 5am I drove to the dentists’ office to be there when he opened, and tried to doze in my car until then. (And, of course, it turned out to be the day of the week where he didn’t open till 10am.) It was an incredible relief when he opened up that root canal, and relieved the pressure. (Though the puss-smelling fluid that spurted out truly made me gag.) Then he cleaned it, sterilized it, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. From then on everything went fine, though.
If I had to have another one done, I would certainly watch more carefully for the start of an infection. I might even get a prescription for antibiotics before, just to have on hand. I’d even consider taking some right afterwards, just to prevent a possible infection.
Not scary, but tedious as hell. Mine took two visits, an hour for the first one and somewhat less for the second. The novocaine killed the pain, not to mention any other sensation in my mouth, for the duration of the visit and then some. After the first visit there was some swelling around the tooth and a sore spot from where some of the equipment had been rubbing against the corner of my mouth, but nothing that OTC drugs couldn’t easily take care of. The nerves that had been feeling the pain before were, after all, pretty well gone. After the second, I just had that annoying new-filling feeling, no pain. Putting on the crown when the tooth was all healed was a piece of cake.
If you want to keep eating, you’ll want those back teeth. It’s amazing how much you’ll miss them when they are gone. As an added bonus, I get phantom tooth pain from the ones that are gone…I’d much rather have kept them than had an extration. My problem was bone loss in my upper jaw though, so there was nothing really holding the teeth where they belonged.
Root canals can be easy as pie and mostly painless. Or they can suck like nobody’s business. From the description of your pain, I would think yours will go easily. If you had a bad abcess or a tooth that is mostly held together with fillings already, it would probably be less pleasant. But root canals do beat tooth pain any day of the week.
For those of you who have had root canals in the past, were you lucky enough to get a future absess in an ancillary canal? That sucked balls and made the choice for me having that tooth extracted. Bone loss, tooth held together with fillings, rod inserted during root canal to help support the tooth, and then a secondary abcess? That tooth was definitely a goner.
I saw the endodontist at 3pm today, and it turns out that I didn’t need a root canal after all. Yay! I do need at least a crown and some gum reduction, though, so now I have a referral for a periodontist. I’ll call his office tomorrow.
Thanks for all of the stories/advice – I’m glad I didn’t need them!
