Not everybody gets a crown, Markxxx - my dentist said we’ll watch it and see if it darkens, and it’s been several years and hasn’t.
I had one and my experience is pretty much like all the rest. Not as bad as it sounds. I didn’t get any kind of drugs for pain (aside from the stuff they used to numb my moth, obviously) and I was okay. It was tender for about a week, but not like agony.
The one thing I wish I had known was to make sure you’re well bundled up. I’m hard to numb, too, so ended up having a whole lot of drugs in me, which made me shake and made me feel super, super cold.
Also, I second/third/whatever bringing an mp3 player. Helps a lot with drowning out both the drilling, and in my case, the republican political gossip.
So the moral of the story is: I had a root canal and the most agonizing parts were being freezing and having to sit there with someone’s hands in my mouth listening to him talk about how Obama is a socialist.
Like others in this thread, I have severe dentist-phobia. I had a root canal a few months ago and it was MUCH better than I had imagined. The key was (1) valium taken beforehand and (2) as a notoriously hard-to-numb patient, I made sure I was given plenty of lidocaine. I made sure to ask for more if I felt any additional sensations. This is key – make sure to ask for another shot or 5 if you feel anything. Don’t be hesitant.
The worst scenario would be to get a dentist who starts out with the minimal amount of numbing then waits to give you more, if you feel something. I always want to make sure they know that I am hard-to-numb and please give me as many shots as you possibly can before starting drilling!!
I had one a few years ago. No big problem doing it; as others have said, spending a couple hours in the chair with your mouth wide open is a minor annoyance.
But a couple of days later it became infected. That was very, very painful. Eventually it became so bad in the middle of the night that I couldn’t sleep, so I got in the car and drove to the dentist’s office, and waited in the parking lot until they opened in the morning. Just my luck, it was a day they opened late and stayed open into the evening.
But when the dentist arrived, he worked on me immediately. Opened it up to clean it out. Simultaneously, immense relief from the removal of the pressure, and vast nausea from the horrible smelling pus that came out from it. Closest I ever came to vomiting in the dentist’s chair. But he cleaned it, flushed it out, packed it, and sent me home with a prescription for strong antibiotics. Everything went fine after that.
(He said that teeth have rather limited blood circulation, so root canals can be prone to getting infections.)
My advice: after you have recovered from the initial visit, if you start to feel it getting worse, do NOT hesitate to call the dentist immediately! If you wait, thinking the pain will go away, it won’t – it will become much worse, only by then the dentists office will be closed for the day. Don’t let that happen to you – you will regret it.
My current dentist seems to get this - for my last visit, he gave me three or four needles right away. I was frozen up to the eyeballs for the next seven hours! But no pain at all for two fillings and a crown.
I’ve been blessed/cursed with relatively insensitive teeth and can go months or years with massive holes in my teeth with little bother, except for chewing. So by the time I give in and go for the root canal, the nerve is practically dead already (so minimal pain) and the tooth itself is probably falling apart. Don’t try this at home, kids!
I’ve had 3 of them and different methods were used for 2 of them. One method involved lots of Novocain up-front and the other involved a combination of Novocain and topical nerve deaden-er. The second method required the dentist to apply the deadening agent periodically on the nerve as it was removed. Unfortunately, the line between feeling absolutely nothing and the worst dental pain ever was non-existent. I was told to signal if I felt anything and I didn’t have time to react fast enough. I knocked the instrument out of his hand.
I would opt for enough Novocain to numb an elephant or the drugs I got when my wisdom teeth were pulled (Sodium Pentathol ?).
I have never had a root canal but I have the WORLD’S BIGGEST dentist phobia.
Because of smoking (yes…smoking is terribly unhealthy, daft, pointless, rude and offensive etc) I developed gum disease or more correctly gum shrinkage due to constricting blood vessels in the gums.
I am a COMPULSIVE teeth brusher which made my gum condition worse (don’t brush too much with a hard brush and your gums will be happy!). I reached the point that my gums had receeded so much that most of my upper teeth were loose and I had to reach the horrifying conclusion that they could not be saved.
I took the WORLD’S BIGGEST wussy choice (because of the dentists suggestion) and had them all removed. The dentist said that my gums were so far gone that even if I had extensive treatment (but coupled with my extreme phobia) it was the only sensible solution and really it was inevitable. He also said that my teeth had no decay and were very healthy which made the whole scenario even crappier, being self inflicted.
I had to have a general anesthic because I was a complete wreck but the moral of my story is, no matter how bad you think it is going to be it really isn’t as bad as you imagine it will be. I woke up with no upper teeth at all, just raw gums and it was sooooooo much less painful then I had imagined it would be. My new plastic-fantastic teeth have been a steep learning curve but if I can have all mine removed and have to deal with plastic teeth then a root canal will be a breeze.
Just go in thinking WELL AT LEAST I’M BETTER OFF THEN THAT KIWI!
Good luck and my thoughts are with you because I really relate to your phobia but like most phobias the worst part is your own imagination!
You will be fine!
I agree it’s not a big deal now, it’s best to go to an endodontist , all they do is root canals. Even better , get one who is board certified. I had 2 recently and both only took about 1 hour.
BTW, dentists stopped using novocain decades ago, they now use lidocaine. Too many people are allergic to novocain.
I am a huge wuss with a big fear of dentists, doctors and needles, and I survived my root canal last March without much of a problem. Here’s my experience!
My regular dentist referred me to a root canal specialist who worked in the same office. I had to first have a consultation so he would know what he’d have to do. During the consultation the specialist explained to me what exactly a root canal would do to my tooth, pointing it out on an x-ray of my mouth.
I explained to him that I have a huge fear of needles and pain. He prescribed me Valium for the procedure and told me to take one the night before and one the morning of the root canal. I did so, but did not really feel any different, although I was less panicked than I thought I’d be so maybe that was the Valium. I had expected to feel all wonky from the Valium, but I really just felt like myself, only not freaking out.
The root canal involved tons and tons of numbing. I’m one of those hard-to-numb people, so I told him this in advance. Well, I was numb alright, I thought my face had fallen off! (Okay, I exaggerate, but he made sure I was super numb before continuing.) The drilling of the tooth did not hurt, I was surprised! I guess the numbing had really done its job. Normally even during a regular filling I can feel it a wee bit, but he really numbed the heck out of my face.
I still did have a couple of mild panic episodes, which is normal for me. They consisted of tears running down my face, shallow breathing and gripping the chair as hard as I could. I mainly found that I hated not being able to move. The specialist and assistant would talk to me and make jokes when this happened, though, and I was watching TV since they had a TV on the ceiling, so the distractions helped to pull me away from the panic. Overall, I didn’t freak out too badly and I was pretty pleased with how I handled it, much better than I expected.
Mainly, it was just long, like a really long filling, and I had a stiff jaw and neck from the position I was in. They filled me up with a temporary filling for a couple of weeks, and the filling contained clove oil and I could taste cloves nonstop for those two weeks. Blech. I don’t much like cloves anymore. Then I went back and got my permanent filling (I don’t have a crown) and for this filling I didn’t even need numbing at all, since there was no nerve, there was no pain.
He had given me a printout which told me when to take painkillers afterward since I could be sore and tender. He had me alternate Advil and regular-strength Tylenol every 2 hours, so that I was only taking the same medication every 4 hours. He said to take them when I left the office even if I wasn’t sore at first, because it is easier to prevent pain than to fight it after it sets in. I ended up with not much pain at all. He also said if I woke up sore the next day to do the same thing, but I didn’t. Score!
Anyway, I had no complications and have had no pain since. I think I really had the best possible root canal experience. It’s not a trip to the fair or anything, but having a good experience has really taken a lot of the fear away. If I need another root canal, I want to go back to the same specialist and I won’t be nearly as anxious.
Had mine done last year…and am still sensitive in that spot. Not as painfull before the rootcanal but at times my pain comes close to it. My issue though stems from the fact that the last file broke off and is embedded in the root with the tiniest of file sticking out…so my jaw has been slow to heal and is still ‘sore’…all in all it wasn’t as much of a big deal as rumour has it
Thanks all for these stories.
I went in for evaluation today; I am indeed suffering from an abscess and am now scheduled for root canal tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.
My dentist told me that your tooth is a rare example of an area where antibiotics don’t work long term. They can work short term which is what happens for me - they make the pain go away. But in the long run only a root canal can clear up an infection in your tooth.
Not quite accurate, according to what my dentist told me.
It’s the white blood cells that fight infections. Antibiotics help, and kill some of the bacteria (but the dead bacteria bodies still have to be removed. And teeth have rather poor blood circulation compared to most parts of the body.
So the antibiotics work slower on infections in teeth, and it may take a long, long treatment with them to cure it completely. The first treatment will kill off much of the infection (and make the pain go away) but if you stop treatment then, there is still infection in there and it will come back again. (That’s why doctors in general tell you to take ALL of your prescribed medication, even if the problem appears to have gone away.)
There may be times when the infection is in the root of the tooth, and the root is dead, so no effective blood circulation any more – then I’d think antibiotics would have little effect, and physically cleaning out the infection via a root canal would be needed. So I guess your dentist would be right in those cases. (The same thing can happen in other parts of the body, too. I had a friend with a pancreas infection which would not respond to treatment over several months. His doctors eventually surgically removed his pancreas (making him diabetic) in order to remove the infection.)