Saving Teeth With Root Canals

Ouch, that hurt!

I was sitting there trying to eat my favorite food and felt pain when I tried to chew. It was a turkey bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, or as one would call it a turkey BLT, but for some reason when I tried it, my tooth hurt! My favorite thing was causing me pain and it is when this happened I knew – I had to go and see my dentist.

I don’t always like going to see the dentist but I did like mine, she was kind and educational so it made it bearable. I sat in the chair and they did several test on my tooth.

First they blew cold air, put cold water and a cold thing that looks like a Q-tip too. They put it on my other teeth and I could feel the cold, but on the tooth that hurt I couldn’t feel anything! Another test they did was they tapped on the teeth, they tapped on the teeth towards the back of my tooth and the front of my tooth and I didn’t feel any pain but when they tapped on tooth that didn’t feel cold- Ouch that was it!

After the tests they took an X-ray and showed me the image. At the bottom of the tooth root was a small dark circle and they told me this is most likely a dental abscess.

This is what they told me “Something has happened to your tooth that has made the nerve die and cause it to abscess – to take care of this, we would have to do a procedure called a root canal. After the root canal we would restore it back with a buildup and crown. The other option is to take the tooth out.”

What? I didn’t want to lose my tooth! From what I understood – the root canal would take my nerve out and it would alleviate the pain that I had. It would also allow me to keep my tooth so I wouldn’t have to take it out, after they did the root canal, they would then fill the hole with a filling and then they would do a crown since it was a back tooth.

Root canals are great treatment for dead nerves, but when you take the nerve out of a tooth, it takes away the nerve bundle that carries the blood vessels. This would make the tooth more brittle due to lack of nutrients. For example if you took the nerve and blood away from your arm, what would happen? The answer is simple- your arm would deteriorate, the muscle and bones would all deteriorate, everything! That’s why when you take the nerve out of a tooth, the structure gets more susceptible to fracture and the crown is great for long term strength.

I was swollen and in pain and I was down for the plan, it all made sense! The first thing she did was give me an antibiotic. The antibiotic would help decrease the swelling of the abscess, but it was not a permanent solution. So I went ahead and saved my tooth, took the antibiotic and completed my root canal and crown. Very happy with my choice five years later!