they suck.... p.s.- grinding your teeth at night is not a harmless habit. sometimes you can grind so hard for so long that you break off part of your tooth, resulting in one of the most painful oral surgeries ever... EVER!... wish someone had told me that... if you grind, get a mouthpiece, you'll thank yourself later.
What are they exactly again? I'm too lazy to wiki it. I knew what they were, but I've forgotten. etc etc.
it's where you have a hole in your tooth, caused by a big cavity, or in my case, breakage caused by grinding. Anyway the nerve of your tooth is exposed and is subject to food and bacteria and infection, so they drill a hole, and scoop out all of the living nerve/root (which goes pretty deep) and replace it with a dental cement. Since the nerve is removed the tooth no longer receives nutrients and becomes a "dead tooth" and runs the risk of falling out, so they drill a screw through the tooth and into the living tissue, sometimes into the skull, to keep it attatched. At least that's how my dentist explained it to me. When they're all done they crown it and give you 400 miligrams of ibuprofrin which does absolutely nothing... It's really... really.... really painful.
Wow... Sounds utterly horrible. I'm surprised they wouldn't prescribe some Oxycodone or something of that like for something that painful.
lol..one of my friends has had four root canals till date...and her cheek swells up every time-it looks painful, like as in when a bee bites and it swells-I can imagine how painful it must be..
my dentist won't do root canals on me anymore. He has done 5 on different teeth and they never take. some people are like that. We go through the pain but within a couple of months they have to be done all over again. If you grind your teeth and can't afford the mouth guard you can use the ones the hockey players use. Just pick one up at the sporting goods store.
That sounds absolutely horrible. Forget a mouth piece, I think I'll fill my mouth with bubble wrap as long as I never have to have that done.
You need to see a good endodontist...not a dentist. Endodontists are equipped with special training and equipment, such that, the entire root canal procedure is inconvenient but not painful. http://www.docshop.com/education/dental/general-dentistry/root-canal/ I am undergoing some reconstructive dental surgery that involves multiple root canals. Front teeth have a single root and are not complex but molars at the rear of your mouth have three major roots and often one additional minor root...all have to be removed and packed with cement before bridges or crowns can be installed by a dentist. So far, I've had three root canals and I have two more waiting. None of them has been painful...the Novocaine shot is the only painful moment, followed by a day or two of a sore jaw that is easily tolerated. It's a lot harder to get "over" the cost of those damn root canals! LOL
NaCl I agree. they are not that painful. I think I have had 10 done and with the freezing shot and the pain meds for after the only thing that hurt with me is my back since I have to sit still for so long. My surgeon is great and this being a small remote town we are blessed to have him. 4 hours to another surgeon and weeks to get an appointment with them. Don and I are both at the age where teeth start to give lots of problems so we have gotten to be good friends with him so we call and usually we have next day appointments. (nice to make friends in high places. He tries all different freezing methods for me since they usually give me migraines. He stops every few minutes to ask if I want to get up and stretch. He is also a great looking guy. The best thing about him for me is that he chats about hunting, fishing my children who he also knows and does not tell me what he is doing. I hate to hear what he is doing as that just scares the beejeezus out of me. The bill for the proceedure would make it even worse but so far Don's drug plan covers 95% of the cost which is a blessing. I think the last bill would have been $4000. cdn YIKES. If we had to pay that it would be almost better to go with dentures.
Most root canals these days are more painful to the wallet than to the mouth. Sure, having your mouth clamped open wide enough to fit an NBA basketball is a bit rough on the hinge of the jaw, and the three to four Novocaine injection sites are not fun either. But the actual work is relatively painless, if done right. However, I did have an endodontist a number of years ago who mismeasured the length of one of the roots on the X-ray films. He thought it was about a millimeter longer than it was. So every time he inserted the file to clean to the end of the root, he ended up probing the nerve bundle beneath. Anaesthetic or not, that felt like an electrified needle. Three times he tried it. On the third try, I accidentally ripped the plastic armrest off the chair. But then he realized he had mismeasured, so he never said a word about the damage to the chair. You can be damned sure I never went to that endodontist again.
He was probably grateful it wasn't his arm that got ripped off. I have a friend that is so afraid of dentists that he mixed up Bondo and put it in his cavity.
And in the news today... a Missouri man reached critical mass in a bizarre cavity-packing incident...
I haven't had the pleasure myself (yet), but a good friend of mine just did. And she's pregnant, so limited pain meds.
I had to have my two front teeth root canaled (if that is a word) when I was like 2. It is one of my earliest memories. I tripped on my blanket and landed on my teeth basically killing them. The dentist did two root canals without anesthesia since I was so young. My mother said she could hear my screaming from the parking lot. I had dreams of dental offices with jungle animals on the walls (the theme of this children's dental office was jungle book) for years until I mentioned them to my parents and they told me about he root canals. It all came back..kinda..and the dreams stopped. I remembered the falling, but had blocked the dental proceedure. Ah...childhood trauma.
