My new dentist LOOKS competent but after each of 3 visits, the first an examination, the second a “Temporary” root canal and the third the allegedly permanent root canal, I feel much worse after leaving. I went in feeling a little sore and left with a root canal she said “went very well” in agony. The freezing didn’t even last the entire procedure. That was yesterday at noon and right now the entire right side of my jaw hurts like a bastard and the tooth is throbbing.
She prescribed me Tylenol 3, which has no effect on me, and some antibiotic, which I assume does but it doesn’t help the pain. I’m throwing back a few Advils in between Tylenol 3 doses, which helps a tiny bit.
If this doesn’t feel better tomorrow I’m going back and demanding either Demerol or a pair of fucking pliers. I’ve been in three fucking times and she still hasn’t fixed it.
Hey, I work in a dental office, and we just did an endo fill today! You really should call your dentist (didn’t she do a post-op call?) if you’re still feeling the agony. Do you have another appointment to complete the root canal? Or are you still getting it filled? In our office, root canals usually take two to 3 appointments, then you go back to prep for the crown, and then you come back again to get the crown put in.
It may be taking a long time to complete because of the tooth itself. The patient we had today is going to have to come back a third time, possibly because her roots are very, very deep on this particular tooth.
I had a root canal (my first) done last March. It still hurts when anything hot or cold touches it. Five % of root canals fail, apparently; 32 hours isn’t long enough to say if it has failed, but it might have. I’d go back to the dentist and tell her what’s going on; teeth do need time to settle down after big procedures, but you should have effective painkillers if you need it.
ETA: I’ve never had a dentist call me to inquire about my health after procedures.
Is a post-op call a new standard, now? I had a root canal done a couple of months ago, and got my first post-op call. The dentist also made sure I had his cell phone number, just in case.
Hn. Years ago I had the first part of a root canal. They drilled out everything and put in the silly putty. No pain at all.
I never went back for the crown, so three years later, i got it pulled.
I had a root canal about 6 weeks ago (no pain medication offered; I used Advil) in a tooth that already had a crown. Since the crown was around 30 years old, I opted to replace it and the one next to it. Two weeks ago I had the old crowns removed and got a temporary bridge, which is much more awful than the temporaries I had in my youth before I was old enough for crowns. They’re not pitched quite right, they feel crowded, and the one with the new root canal hurts when I touch it in one spot. This is with an excellent endodontist, and my dentist who took a lot of time to fit this bridge. I had the crown colors checked Friday and the crowns go on Monday. I really hope that’s more satisfactory than what I’m working with right now.
So RickJay, how are you doing? Me, I go in every few days, get something adjusted (i.e., ground down a little more) and then see where the new configuration strikes incorrectly. It’s a laugh a minute. Plus, the new crowns make my "S"s whistle. <–dental smiley
I dunno, actually. Our practice is a small one, so it’s no big deal to do a call for a few people. I don’t know if a call is more or less likely in a mega-practice.
Update: The one with the recent root canal is still a little sensitive on one side. Today I finally got the crowns permanently cemented. They looked crooked when installed and the dentist was very solicitous and helpful. He did some adjustments and promises to have new crowns made if I’m not satisfied. Sadly, I must return at 7:00 AM tomorrow to have a molar with a cracked filling crowned.
My root canal still hurts after almost a year. It is on a tooth that was damned near impossible to freeze; you’d think after God knows how many years of dentistry that they would have figured out where all the goddamned nerves can be in teeth by now, but no. $3500 later, and it’s still a goddamned guessing game (which I lost). Now I have to go in for another tooth to get fixed, and it will probably be another root canal because the tooth is cracked under the filling. Can somebody somewhere pull the dental industry kicking and screaming out of the dark ages of barbarism and into modern times where they can actually do stuff effectively and painlessly?
On the evening of Friday, December 26th, one of my molars started throbbing with pain. My dentist was closed by that time of day and they don’t have Saturday hours. So on Monday the 29th, first thing in the morning, I called for an emergency visit and they fit me in later that morning.
That tooth, which had a silver filling, had cracked and become infected. Since I was being squeezed in, he only had time to do a partial root canal and put in a temporary filling. He was leaving town for the holiday the next day, so the soonest I could get back in to have the work finished was yesterday.
So yesterday at 8:00AM I was in the dentist’s chair for my second root canal in a week. The rest of the filling came out, along with the last 2 roots (which, by the way, required 2 shots in 2 locations of novocaine). I was fitted with a post and then a crown. Three and a half hours of full combat in my mouth with weapons of mass destruction.
Last night when the novocaine finally fully wore off, I was in agonizing pain. And today my tooth is still throbbing and I can’t bite down on anything on that side of my mouth, including noodles! Feh.
Most of the time, my teeth will numb up just fine. One tooth, #31, would NEVER get numb, and I sat through several drill’n’fill sessions leaving fingerprints on the arms of the chair. Last fall, however, I decided that enough was enough and had that tooth pulled. The dentist said that the tooth didn’t need to be pulled, really, but agreed that if I was avoiding office visits because I didn’t want to have another procedure done on that tooth without it being numb, then getting it yanked was acceptable. I had one dentist give me so much Novocaine that the area was still numb 2 days later…except, of course, for that one damned tooth.
I went to my dentist’s yesterday, in fact, and asked him when we were gonna be able to clone tooth buds and implant them. He laughed and said it was a great idea, but couldn’t give me any reasonable hope.
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW I’m so fucking sorry (I threw in the fucking so it would fit the pit ;)) Hope you feel better soon honey. On another dental note I can’t have root canals. Apparently my roots are flat. No, I don’t understand. As Rico puts it, it’s the only part of me that is flat. You can discuss that with him further. All I know is they put me to sleep and I wake up with one less tooth whenever that happens. I was cursed with good teeth so I still have most of them dammit (another token swear word since I’m in the pit) My antipathies to all… Kathy
My husband got a post-op call on a much less complicated procedure. I think its standard these days.
To address the OP, Call the dentist! You should not be feeling this bad. I’ve never had one, but everyone I’ve talked to in the last 10 years said it is no more painful than getting a filling, these days.
I saw a story on the news about that quite a few years ago. The question becomes (to me), even given that it takes a long time to go from “medicine can do this” to “medicine is now allowed to do this”, will dentists give up their profitable practices of questionable, limited effectiveness?
My first root canal gave me very little trouble or discomfort (other than the hit to my wallet). The second one was going as well until the dentist drilled past the Novocain into live unanesthetized nerve.
When we’d both recovered from my instinctive and instantaneous hurling of myself half out of the chair, he proceeded to INSERT THE NOVOCAIN NEEDLE INTO THE NERVE so he could finish the procedure.
I will never have another root canal. EVER. My regular dentist understands and refers me to an oral surgeon who’s a wiz at swift, painless extractions when a tooth goes irremedially bad beyond her fixing.
I’d rather have every frikkin tooth pulled than go through another root canal. Especially when there’s no guarantee that the procedure will actually result in a useable replacement, so there’s all that money and potential suffering for nothing more than an eventual tooth extraction.
<–dental smiley