You know its bad when ...

[BackInTex]

you hope to hear "You need a root canal."

A tooth, a capped tooth, decided it wanted some attention Friday night. So it screamed when the hot soup hit it. For the rest of the weekend it was on and off. Mostly on Saturday night as I did not get to sleep until aroun 4:00am. I was contemplating yanking the cap off as it felt like that was causing the pain.

So I get into the dentist this morning and he sees nothing. So he is sending me to a Endodontist. I'll see her tomorrow. My dentist said it may be the nerve finally dieing, thus a root canal to fix. Or the tooth has cracked under the cap requiring the whole tooth to be pulled and then a required implant.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm hoping for the root canal.

One other slight possibility is there could be a bit of an infection there somewhere causing the pain, but he doesn't see any indication of that. I'll find out tomorrow.

[SportsFan68]

I agree that tooth pulling is a last resort, and I can see why you're rooting for the root canal. However, implants are not to be feared. I hope you won't worry if it comes to that. I posted about this a while back, I'll see if I can find it.

Good luck, whatever happens.

[SportsFan68]

I posted this in January:

I couldn't be happier with mine. I replaced the teeth that are identified as 7 and 8 on this chart.



Those two had been slipping for about a decade, same as my mom. She got a bridge which I did not like because it looked fake. She didn't like it either because it was uncomfortable and wore it only when she went out.

The pulling of the teeth hurt very little after the anesthetic wore off. The dentist had a flipper all ready to go, so I was all set until the periodontist got to the real work. I can't remember if I got the screws and the implants at the same time or if there was a delay between the two. After the anesthetic wore off, the screws hurt a little but not too bad. What little pain there was vanished by bedtime.

I can't tell the difference now. The real pain was writing the check -- very pricey here.

I had #4 pulled last year, and while the dentist would have gone ahead with an implant if I had insisted on it, he said that sometimes the implant will cause problems with the sinuses. So I basically got three crowns, one replacing the pulled tooth and two to attach it to the surrounding teeth. I'm not happy with it because it's practically impossible to floss and otherwise keep clean. I wish I'd risked the sinus problems and gotten another implant.

[Bob Juch]

It seems the standard price for implants is $1000 each.

[SportsFan68]

As I said, pricey. But I was happy to pay it, and would again. I had to pay the full charge since implants weren't covered under my dental insurance. I'm not complaining; it covered 100% of preventive work, including cleaning, and 80% or 50% of other work depending on what it was. By now I don't remember what procedures were covered at what percentage.

[BackInTex]

As I said, pricey. But I was happy to pay it, and would again. I had to pay the full charge since implants weren't covered under my dental insurance. I'm not complaining; it covered 100% of preventive work, including cleaning, and 80% or 50% of other work depending on what it was. By now I don't remember what procedures were covered at what percentage.

I've never had insurance that covered implants. My wife has one but it was to fill a gap where there never was a tooth. Maybe my insurance will cover one if it is replacing a tooth. I'll find out if I have to. The estimate out of pocket for a root canal is only $210. I would have paid twice that just to get rid of the pain Saturday night.

[ghostjmf]

Here's hope that a root canal will fix it. I have my only implant because they couldn't continue with a root canal as the tooth had recalcified, i.e. filled in the canal they would have drilled the root out of, which it turns out is not a good thing as it doesn't recalcify solidly enough to prevent decay, but they can't drill through it for fear of cracking the tooth, leaving with a much more difficult extraction than that of just pulling the intact tooth out.


My implant cost around $6,000.00, including special x-rays to judge the width & depth of the jawbone where they planned to do the implant. My insurance paid for 1/2 of it (but not the special x-rays, strangely enough). I had been told to prepare for the insurance paying for none of it. Either they evaluate how good the adjoining teeth will be for forming a bridge, the dental insurance's preferred procedure (mine would have been terrible), or they're coming around to realizing that it doesn't make sense to cap 2 additional teeth to create a bridge for the tooth in between them if the jaw will support an implant instead.


Other people I know up here in the frozen north also paid around $6,000.00 per implant.


Incidentally, about 1/2 hour after I took the antibiotic the emergency root-canal expert my dentist sent me to prescribed, the pain went away. They didn't work on the tooth that day, just evaluated it for the hoped-for root canal; I found out the bad news a while later. I know no medicine works that fast, so part of it was just feeling someone knew what was happening to me, I think. I had woken up from a dream that my kitchen was on fire to find my mouth was on fire.


Also; my sister found out about an infection near the site of a future dental procedure from the dentist's x-rays; neither you nor the dentist can necessarily see it on straight observation.

[zachhoran1]

As someone who was on the road to getting dentures when a $3000 car repair for my Mom had to take priority two years ago, I don't know what to say.

[BackInTex]

Here's hope that a root canal will fix it. I have my only implant because they couldn't continue with a root canal as the tooth had recalcified, i.e. filled in the canal they would have drilled the root out of, which it turns out is not a good thing as it doesn't recalcify solidly enough to prevent decay, but they can't drill through it for fear of cracking the tooth, leaving with a much more difficult extraction than that of just pulling the intact tooth out.


My implant cost around $6,000.00, including special x-rays to judge the width & depth of the jawbone where they planned to do the implant. My insurance paid for 1/2 of it (but not the special x-rays, strangely enough). I had been told to prepare for the insurance paying for none of it. Either they evaluate how good the adjoining teeth will be for forming a bridge, the dental insurance's preferred procedure (mine would have been terrible), or they're coming around to realizing that it doesn't make sense to cap 2 additional teeth to create a bridge for the tooth in between them if the jaw will support an implant instead.


Other people I know up here in the frozen north also paid around $6,000.00 per implant.


Incidentally, about 1/2 hour after I took the antibiotic the emergency root-canal expert my dentist sent me to prescribed, the pain went away. They didn't work on the tooth that day, just evaluated it for the hoped-for root canal; I found out the bad news a while later. I know no medicine works that fast, so part of it was just feeling someone knew what was happening to me, I think. I had woken up from a dream that my kitchen was on fire to find my mouth was on fire.


Also; my sister found out about an infection near the site of a future dental procedure from the dentist's x-rays; neither you nor the dentist can necessarily see it on straight observation.

$6,000? Yikes!

[Beebs52]

Jeff has just finished the months long ordeal with an implant. Pain was minimal, cost was $4000 ish including dentist. It's done. BiT you sound like you may have an abcess. I had that under a crown. Excrutiating. New crownafter root canal fixed it.

[littlebeast13]

Implants, shmimplants.... I've gotten by just fine without Tooth #8 for the past 25 years now....

lb13

[BackInTex]

Had a root canal done today. Edodondist did not find a crack but was concerned about some bone loss that could be due to a crack. So I will go back for a follow up in 4 months.

Right now I'm enjoying a pain free evening (after 600mg of ibuprofen).

[SpacemanSpiff]

Glad to hear the root canal took care of it (for now). I know they get a bad rep, but the few times I've had them, the tooth hurt so bad that the root canal was less painful than what was already there -- and that was with one rc where the dentist had a bad batch of xylocane that kept wearing out after about 10 minutes (turns out I metabolize the stuff twice as fast as most folks). After the third shot, I just told him to keep on going no matter what, it couldn't hurt any worse. Once he was done, it was just fine.

[Ritterskoop]

My root canal many years ago was a relief from the abscess - which is to say, the abscess hurt like hell but the root canal procedure itself seemed to be a glorified filling.

The digging out of the root several years later to replace it with rubber instead of cement was no fun, because the hardened material would. not. come. out. It took six hours instead of one. But you know, stuff happens.

Mom is going through the implant process and it seems OK. There is a five-month gap between the tooth removal and the implant putting-in, partly because they want to wait some anyway and partly to get the second procedure into the new billing year. The flipper seems to be no big deal - leave it in four hours a day and it almost doesn't matter which four, and it will keep the other teeth from shifting into the gap.

Good luck.

[ghostjmf]

Ritterskoop:

I'm impressed they were able to dig out the cement. If they can do that, why couldn't they drill through my recalcification? I had looked up a procedure where they could have done my root canal essentially from the side of the tooth (I'm hazy on the details at this point) but they told me I was just delaying the inevitable, giving me details about how that fix didn't last, & told me to have the tooth pulled.


They didn't give me a flipper to save space for my implant. Maybe with that it matters "which tooth", & whether they think things will shift in your mouth. A relative who did have a flipper for a long, long time can testify that the hardest part about it is remembering where you put it when it's not in your mouth. They're a lot like keys that way (minus the "in your mouth" part). At any rate, its good to have a designated storage location & never to change it.


With implants they pull the tooth, wait for that to heal, drill the hole, wait for that to heal?..I forget. Then put in the post, wait for that to heal. In that case, they wait for it to integrate with your jawbone. A whole lot of waiting before you actually get the cap that screws onto the implanted post, & the crown that goes over that. There are places locally that advertise same-day implants but all the other places say you're just begging for complications that way.

[mellytu74]

Had a root canal done today. Edodondist did not find a crack but was concerned about some bone loss that could be due to a crack. So I will go back for a follow up in 4 months.

Right now I'm enjoying a pain free evening (after 600mg of ibuprofen).

Missed that you had it done.

Good that you are pain-free, and hopefully the follow-up will be OK.