No doubt you’d love to hear about my root canal
A couple of weeks ago it was decided – after some sort of panoramic dental X-ray on a machine that played “Fur Elise” in beeping digital sounds – that I needed to have a root canal performed on an upper back molar.
“You need a root canal” is a phrase that no one wants to hear. I had it done on Tuesday, and it was an “interesting” experience.
For one thing, the initially rather chirpy and perky endodontist worked in utter silence. I prefer dentists who give some sort of running account – not constant chatter, but just general intermittent guidance as to what’s happening and how far along in the process I might be. This dentist, a woman who came highly recommended, maintained a strict policy of no talking. I had no problem observing the rules myself, since she’d placed some sort of large rubber boot in my mouth, one that made me feel very grateful that we have noses and nostrils.
The noxious tuneless muzak played on, the dentist drilled and scraped and picked at my tooth, and the whole thing seemed to go on for a longer time than I had expected. Perhaps an hour and forty-five minutes? I keep telling myself, “don’t be a wimp,” but my efforts to relax were about as effective as my Lamaze breathing had been during labor many a long year ago – which is to say, not very.
I also kept hearing her sigh. Why is she sighing? I wondered. At the end, she told me that it had been a very difficult process and I’d have to return in two weeks for more. Why so difficult? Apparently my beleaguered tooth had thrown up barriers, surrounding the nerve roots with some sort of extra bony layer that took forty minutes (and lots of strength) to drill through rather than five. Plus, one of the roots seemed to have gone into hiding.
Please wish me luck.
And none of that was visible on the x-ray? Ok… well… Prayers for a smoother second effort.
Wow, 1 hour and 45 with only sighs? My husband struggles at the dentist and is about to finish an implant procedure. He requested that the dentist talk through the procedures. Very helpful for him. I hope things resolve without any complications, Neo. I’ll add you to my prayers.
I have fears of needing this sometime.
Did you discuss with the dentist the option of a simple(?) extraction? That would be my first question, I think, especially if it’s a rearmost molar (my 4 wisdom teeth having been removed years ago).
I’ve had four. Three done at once. The guy who did the first one broke the root and I had to have it extracted and get an implant. THAT was fun. (sarcasm.) The local anesthesia wore off before I got the prescription filled for the good stuff. Ugh. Talk about painful.
A different dentist did the other three. He was great at making me feel at ease. He also had a tv and I got to pick the movie.
I think the worst dental work I got done was a gum thing where they harvest skin from the roof of your mouth and sew it to your gum. THAT was horrible!
Actually, I go to a dentist now who belongs to some dentists’ organization that has a philosophical approach to interacting with patients. (One of which is don’t make patients feel guilty.) I forget the name of it. The guy who did the three root canals was a member and I thought, since I was moving and had to find a new dentist, I stock with one who was also a member. She’s great!
Root canal? A piece of cake. At least the one I’ve had done.
Wisdom tooth extraction? If the tooth is badly impacted, it can be H*ll! I was 34, in the Navy and it was done at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. They had the Navy’s best oral surgeon there, but he was playing golf the day I had my extraction. 🙁
The newbie straight out of training operated on me. After two hours the poor newbie sent an SOS, and the top surgeon left the golf course and finished up the job. Result – the right side of my face was swollen for two weeks, and the mandible nerve was severed. That left me with no feeling in my lower right jaw. That was 58 years ago, and my jaw is still numb.
They did give me a letter saying I could claim 10% disability with the VA. 🙂 It still sits in my files gathering dust.
I send best wishes for a successful completion of your root canal, Neo. I hope you can get more of a running commentary during your next go.
J.J.:
Wow, that sounds awful!
I mentioned to this dentist, after she was done, that I rather like hearing how things are going now and then during the work as it’s happening. She replied, “I never talk while I’m working.” So I certainly didn’t push it – don’t want to throw her off her game.
J.J.:
No period of military service is complete without a horror story involving the dentist.
Mine: When having my wisdom teeth extracted, as the Army dentist sewed my gums back together I felt an odd poking at my tongue.
“Oops!” says the dentist. He wasn’t paying attention, and had somehow hooked my tongue with the stitches.
He unclipped the stitches and freed my tongue, then sent me back on my way, which just happened to be 24-hour guard duty. No pain medication, either. Ibuprofen and water.
I spent the night sitting at a staff duty desk spitting blood into a garbage can.
Be all that you can be, indeed.
Watt — Root canals beat the hell out of extraction. Pretty much when it’s done, the pain is done.
The bad thing about root canals is later on, since your tooth is dead, it’s hard to pinpoint dental pain issues.
I had a root canal done when I was ten years old. I remember it as terribly painful. X-rays still show the silver replacement root, which amazes dentists younger than the root canal, sixty-six years old now.
I hope you will not have pain and that the second round will go smoothly.
Good luck on the continuation of the procedure, Neo. Here’s hoping it goes well.
“She replied, ‘I never talk while I’m working’.”
I can sympathize, in a fashion. Doing a demanding procedure requires extreme concentration and talk might distract from the concentration needed.
When I was training to become a flight instructor I remember telling the person I was working with that I found it difficult to fly and talk at the same time. The flying took all the bandwidth I had, but as my instructor pointed out, talking was a large part of my job: demonstrating what I was teaching without explaining it was not sufficient.
He recommended I start by memorizing a few riffs I could use for specific maneuvers, like explaining what control inputs I was using on final approach to landing, so after two or three examples it became almost automatic and I could begin to expand on my patter. It quickly became so easy to fly and talk at the same time that I had to remind myself not to talk too much.
Maybe your oral surgeon could try some memorized patter to begin with.
Neo,
Was an implant not an option?
Several friends have had root canals fail and had to be replaced with an implant. Everyone this has happened to has decided to skip the root canal phase in future and go straight to an implant. Of course it depends on insurance coverage – implants are expensive.
Seems to be fairly common as our dentist told my husband if he had anymore trouble with his root canal, it was time for an implant.
You’re right about military medicine and dental stories, Grunt. A blog for comparing horror stories would be quite lengthy and…….. horrifying.
it’s the main reason I have always been against socialized medicine.
When I had my root canal my Doctor was playing (and singing) Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads….epic.
the option of a simple(?) extraction?
That is what I ended up doing with a difficult tooth. Repeated attempts to save it didn’t work, ten minutes and it was out. However, I did have the root canal specialist remove some stitches from a cut in my forehead that I got in an electric scooter crash, so there was that. Saved a trip to the doctor 🙂
My watch tracks stress, last time I was at the dentist it showed blue, i.e., I was napping. I told the dentist that I came for the relaxation, and showed him the stress graph. He laughed.
Molly Brown:
I’ve had a previous root canal and previous extraction and implant. I prefer to try the root canal if possible. I like to keep as many of of my own teeth as possible, plus a root canal is MUCH less expensive.
Neo,
Got it. And I feel the same way about keeping as many of my original teeth as possible! And the $$.
Here’s hoping for a good outcome for you.
The root of much evil…
(There was a thread not too long ago on—I’m paraphrasing—“How could they not see what was right in front of their eyes?”…
“A suitcase under the bed uncovers a fortune lost to the Nazis;
“What began as a simple act of sorting through his late father’s belongings turned into a journey through a buried family past – one that revealed immense wealth, tragic loss, and long-delayed justice.”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/416455
Ugh, Neo, that does not sound like fun. I know you don’t need root canal horror stories, so I advise you not to read mine below unless you’re feeling strong!
I have had two, I think, root canals. One was not bad. The other – well. The endodontist said the nerve was dead and there was no need for anesthetic. Why he thought so, I don’t know, but he was wrong. I have never felt anything like the pain. I all but jumped out of the chair. And then the anesthetic that the frantically apologetic endodontist had to use after all wouldn’t take, because the not-dead nerve was so jangled. It got a little better, but never fully numb.
I got through it, or so I thought. But as I drove away, I realized within a block or two that I was too shaken up to drive. Other cars, stop signs, traffic lights, people’s blinkers were just visual noise, not making sense to me. I pulled over in some parking lot and just sat there, trying to think calm thoughts. It was quite a while before I felt enough like myself to manage the 45-minute drive home.
Two root canals – my dentist has a video screen hanging from the roof that plays travel TV shows with text, I travelled through the Andes and South East Asia 🙂
Earlier this year I too decided to have a root canal..
What great fun.
And since having a root canal was so enjoyable, I decided a few weeks later that two dental caps should be installed on my teeth (or what was left of the two teeth after the dentist “shapes” the tooth to accommodate the caps).
Yes, one of the caps was installed on the tooth that had just been awarded the root canal.
Apparently, based upon what I was told by my dentist, I should have had this root canal several years ago, but I never had any symptoms or pain or anything. Only by looking at X-Rays did the dentist know a root canal was needed.
As for a root canal vs a tooth extraction; at least with the root canal you can still keep the tooth, capped or otherwise.
Well, this is my nightmare…
Best of luck!
No root canals but I have had impacted wisdom teeth extracted along with two crowns, one done earlier this year. My bottom wisdom teeth came out under general anesthesia when I was in college but as I, and my family, were totally unfamiliar with what the procedure would entail, I wound up having to sleep it off in the office and then walk to a bus stop to get back to my dorm room. Thankfully nothing turned south after the procedure. The other two, not entirely impacted, came out much later with gas. The first crown wasn’t too uncomfortable as I remember but the latest one on a back molar caused a lot of pain after the initial drilling, plus the dental tech did a really really good job of gluing on the temporary cover. I didn’t lose it during the wait but man that thing did NOT want to come off. First time I’ve stopped a procedure and asked to get shot up, and was glad since we spent about half an hour testing fitting and removing the permanent to get it correctly shaped.
I had a root canal done in 2019. I was exceedingly appreciative of that man’s skills and happily paid his four-digit charges. My regular dentist added a crown. We’ve moved since then and I miss those guys. (Though we have a great veterinarian where we’re living now).
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Had impacted wisdom teeth removed in 1982. Also appreciative of that man’s efforts. He could do it with novocaine. He died about ten years ago. A tribute to him is here.
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https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/dr-bejan-iranpour-remembered
Christopher’s story is pretty much my exact story except for the second crown. That tooth was 3d scanned and the permanent crown was CNC milled while I watched. The temp glue held the crown for two years until they could get it off to make it permanent.
Root canal wasn’t bad next to the wisdom teeth extraction. Not quite having the adventures described above — still it took longer than expected because it was a nasty impaction.
The first night I woke up a hour before the next dose of prescription pain killer and ached the whole hour. The second I still woke up in the dead of night as it enforced the once every eight hours thing.
Then everyone else in the household took sick (I was the healthiest person there two days after extraction) and I only held it off three days. This slowed the healing, and I could choke down so few things.
I rather fly into combat than have a root canal.
I had a female periodontist in Mexico who sang along with American pop tunes as she did my deep cleaning. It took a while. Then she told me she was giving me a discount. Because I didn’t whine, and didn’t bite her.
I asked if the biting happened often. She said it did, in a growl.
On the other hand, I had a different Mexican dentist doing something, can’t remember what. The novocaine was wearing off, and me being Mr. Stoic, wasn’t complaining, but was starting to bend the arms of the chair.
He asked me, “Am I hurting you?”
Stoic me replies, “Mumble mumble it’s okay.”
“AM I HURTING YOU? Because I can make it stop.”
“Mumble mumble maybe a little.”
“All right,” and he went to work with the needle and the pain stopped.
Then he looked at me severely, and said, “Don’t be brave.”
I’m not a dentist, but because I work with so many dental patients and with dentists also, I have learned much, including dental Spanish. One of the things I have learned is that teeth, especially molars, can have fantastically complicated structures. There doesn’t seem to be a reason why this is so, and it varies from tooth to tooth.
My dentist uses a wonderful high-tech flexible titanium drill that works extremely fast and is precision guided by some kind of fancy imaging technique. There’s no pain during or after the procedure, which is complete in about 45 minutes. I go home with a temporary crown and come back in a couple of weeks for a permanent crown. It costs about $1,300. This is a tiny town, so if the technology has been available here for a decade or more, you should be able to find it where you live.
I’m suddenly entertaining thoughts of Dustin Hoffman, sitting bound in a chair while Laurence Olivier hovers over him with pliers in his hand, asking, “IS IT SAFE?”
Best wishes, neo.
M J R
Oh, man, these comments all bring back so many memories. I’ve had several root canals and crowns and I am now working on my second implant. The first one went well, but I realized that I hate having the impression taken in the traditional way (rubbery goop in a tray) when I had a panic attack. I now try to have a scan done, and it has worked fine until my last one. I had the post put in for my implant, I had the scan for the new tooth, and then the tooth didn’t fit. (The dentist wrestling with it for 40 minutes or so was great fun. Not.) Going in tomorrow for a retry. Wish me luck! And Neo, good luck to you, too!
I hope the rest of the procedure goes smoothly, quickly, painlessly. Nowadays they can 3-D print the replacement crown on premises and so there’s no need to go back in a couple of weeks to get the permanent one installed.
I think root canals are preferable to extraction, too. So far I’ve had to have 2 of them. No fun, but if the dentist is skilled they’re bearable. Mine stayed ahead of the pain and used the needle about 2/3 of the way through the second one. It really does pay to shop your dentist and get a good recommendation for one that specializes.
Yes, best wishes, Neo and LadyHobbit, for successful appointments going forward!
.
I had a root canal a few years ago that seemed to take forever.
Fighting back some panic was exhausting.
Now, I have a tooth accused of “resorption” — a new concept to me.
It’s supposedly an autoimmune attack where the body reabsorbs a part of the tooth. In this case, the inside of the tooth is disappearing. If I understood correctly.
The Dr my dentist referred me to wants to do a procedure that takes at least 6 months … using some growth factors mixed with my stem cells packed in (as i recall), followed by an implant.
So. 7-8 months of …??
Sounds scary, and veey expensive.
I hope to get a 2nd opinion in the new year, as other family health events have superceded things.
Steve (retired/recovering lawyer) —
EVERY time I am in the dentists chair, I think of that scene.
She replied, “I never talk while I’m working.”
Better than the dentist who kept telling jokes which were actually funny during painful procedure while my mouth was propped open.
To make it worse, assistant was a girl from my senior year that I had a crush on.
Second memorable was same dentist but older woman assistant (30s? lol). Laughing gas to relax me, half awake, half asleep dream state while assistant held my hand. I had erotic dream about her during procedure. Fortunately, procedure ended before dream “reached completion”.
fullmoon:
Please read this story by John Updike entitled “Tristan and Iseult.” Trust me; it’s relevant.
The new tooth is in! It took a full hour, but it’s DONE! Thank you, Marlene, for the good wishes!
Neo, good luck with the next appointment!
Ladyhobbit:
Thanks, and I’m happy for you.
Ladyhobbit, Me too! Ditto Neo’s … I’m happy for your dental success! 8-}
Such a relief, I know.
Kindly consider the geographic features of Neo’s back row molar. It is hard to imagine a more challenging location. The dentist is limited to working via anterior access only to a tough-to-remove multi-root molar (which does not “wish” to be extracted) while avoiding injury to lips, other teeth, gums.
Nitrous oxide for me, if it’s anything other than routine checkup and cleaning. I’ll pay for it if the insurance doesn’t – it’s worth it. Good luck Neo; I appreciated this thread as I may be facing these decisions myself someday.
Hooray for ladyhobbit! And hooray for all of you who have survived the chair!