Well, my upper jaw is killing me, it’s hurting so bad. And I share nearly everything else with you guys, so why not this?
It started last Wed. but it was really mild, and I could feel a canker sore (internal, not a fever blister) coming out in the same area, so I figured it was just a really bad one of those. But the canker sore is there now, and not a bad one at all, and my jaw has worsened to this dull, throbbing pain which I’m afraid is in the nerve.
Well I’ve been lucky to have good strong teeth and have not had any problems since I was a preteen. Well, other than my wisdom teeth at 17. I didn’t even have to wear braces, so I guess karma or something is catching up to me.
Tomorrow I’m going to call and make an appointment with the dentist. I’m nervous and afraid even though I know it’s silly. When I had my wisdoms pulled (all 4) everyone gave me horror stories but I was better in literally five days. But I do remember my mom griping about the cost, so I’m afraid of
a) a root canal,
b) thousands of dollars of dental bills
I know I’m being unreasonable, but ouch! ouch! ouch!
You are going to call and make an appointment? When one of my teeth rotted I was running around the neighborhood trying to get any dentist who had spare time to see me. I called practically every dentist in the phonebook before I was able to take off from work and get someone to look at the tooth.
I was shaking so much from the pain the dentist, who thought I was merely terrified of him, told me he’d give me valium if I came back in to have the tooth pulled. I went home wanting to slam my head against the wall until the pain ended. Oh, did I mention Vicodin just makes me puke.
Good luck anyway. And don’t wait too long. As one who’s been there, I can tell you that it isn’t good to wait.
Kids, do what mommy says and always brush. Really. This has been your public service announcement for the day.
I was attracted to the thread title because today a tooth started hurting bad enough for me to dig out some old Tylenol 3 with codene. Fortunately, I work Saturdays and am off Mondays, so tomorrow morning I will be at my dentist’s office haunting the waiting room until he can squeeze me in.
I hope it’s just a cavity, but it has that deep throb that might just well spell root canal. It wouldn’t be my first, and I know well the agonies of waiting.
Warning! Dental horror story
The year is 1971. I’m a Senior in a large state college, 200 miles from home. A tooth starts twinging me. I’m no stranger to the dentist’s chair, having had a number of cavities as a kid and had worn braces for ten years (Yes, that’s 10 years. Had to actually have them rebanded at one point, but that’s a different dental horror story.)
I let it go, thinking it’s just a sore gum and it will go away.
It doesn’t.
Eventually, it’s so painful that I seek emergency dental help. My regular dentist is far away, so I head for a large dental clinic near campus. I describe my symptoms, fill out paperwork, and a dentist examines me and says something like “You’ve got a root canal that’s gonna blow,” meaning it is badly infected. “I’ll get you into our specialist right away.”
Specialist was busy with a sceduled appontment, but promised to squeeze me in. I go back to waiting room in agony.
Time passes.
Eventually, I ask why the delay, and am told that a parent has come in with a child who has broken out a tooth in an accident, and they are operating immediately to reimplant the tooth in order to save it. I have been postponed by this other emergency.
I ask for pain medication and am reluctantly given a Tylenol 3, which barely masks the sharp pains in my upper jaw.
At last I am taken in, numbed and the work begins. the bad tooth is my upper left canine, and the specialist isolates it with a rubber dam from the other teeth. At one point he stops the drilling to show me, via a small dental mirror and a larger one, the most unusual sight… pus oozing out of the hole he has just drilled in my tooth. (He thoughtfully did the drilling on the interior side, so the filling won’t show.)
This, indeed, is daunting.
When he finishes, he tells me that the infection spread to my gums and further dental surgery is required.
Two days later, I am back for the dental surgery and am given an IV with demerol and phenacetin (I askwhat they were shooting me up with) and they peel back my gum and clean out the infection on the jawbone. I am in the chair for four hours. It feels like 40 minutes, maybe, thanks to the meds.
I am sore for some time, but the infection doesn’t return, and I don’t need another root canal for 20+years
I had a tooth pulled Wednesday. It was the first non-wisdom tooth I ever had extracted. Seems that the bones holding the teeth are, well, disappearing. This tooth, the top-right back molar, was noticably loose the last couple of weeks, but just started annoying the bejebus out of me New Year’s weekend.
I’ve got another appointment this Wednesday with an oral surgeon to see what can be done about inserting bone grafts to save the rest of the back molars. But my dentist doesn’t think it’s going to help much at this stage of the game.
And Anaamika a root canal isn’t so bad. I had one years ago, and it really made things easier for me. And you don’t even have to get a silver filling anymore - they can make them look just like the top of a tooth.
Well, I’ve got an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. It hurts, but it’s not bad enough to bring me to my knees or anything. Anyway, I did want to wait and make sure it wasn’t just the canker sore.
Let’s see what the dentist says. I’ll update you guys.
This thread is worrying me. I started with a mild toothache Saturday night, and it actually woke me up briefly last night. I’ve been sick, though, and this is in the same spot where I usually get a toothache if my sinuses are congested. The dentist once noticed on my x-rays that my upper sinuses come very close to the roots of my upper molars, so when the sinuses get irritated, I get toothaches. I’m hoping that’s all it is, because the last time I needed a filling, I suffered from temperature sensitivity on that tooth for months afterwards.
Some of the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life was tooth pain caused by grinding teeth. I called the dentist in a panic - it was Saturday evening - and she called in a prescription for some pretty damn good pain killers. I was sure my tooth was rotting, and I’d need a root canal or some other form of torture.
When I went to the dentist on Monday morning, she examined me and pronounced the pain was from grinding. I didn’t believe her. How the hell could grinding my teeth produce THAT MUCH PAIN?!?
She didn’t see anything else wrong, and despite my pleading with her for a root canal, she “adjusted my bite” - a process that involves filing down teeth - and sent me home with more painkillers, and some muscle relaxant.
Lo and behold, it worked. It worked even better when I got a thingamajig to put in my mouth that prevented me from grinding in my sleep. As it turns out, I think I did more damage during the day. I figured out that I clench my teeth a lot during the day, and gradually trained myself not to.
Nowadays I have very little pain caused from grinding teeth, but 7-8 years ago it was not uncommon for me to stay home from work once a month or so because of the horrible headaches I gave myself.
