a_cubed | Dental Woes

At the back end of last year a crown came off. I went to the dentist hoping it was just an attachment failure, but no such luck. Decay underneath it needing cleaned out and a temporary crown put back on and a few months waiting to see if it needed a root canal. That doesn't appear to. When I had an appointment for the net stage on that one, though, just before the same tooth on the other side starting giving me some pain a bit like a developing abcess. The dentist was a bit surprised as that tooth is a lower pre-molar and had already had a root canal done a while back. You can still have problems right at the base of the root. They investigated including a CAT scan and some digging around and found that the tooth had cracked under the crown, and that it unusually had a second root spur. Today was the third weekly appointment to deal with this. Last week they dug out the gum that had pushed into the crack (moderately painful for a few days while that healed). Today they did the root canal on the extra root spur, which was infected. I've now got topical antibiotics warring with the infection in the depths of the tooth, which is somewhat painful. Got to wait for the infection to clear (hopefully) and everything to calm down again. So, three weeks before the next treatment to, I think, put a permanent root filling in. Then it'll be a wait until I can get the new permanent crown on that. Not sure if we'll do the original tooth's crown in the mean time or just get both measured and fitted together later.

Painful and expensive.