Abscess tooth/dental surgery before?

[Fosgate]

So a couple about Sunday a molar I have a gold crown on started to ache. I woke up thinking I just had a piece of food caught, no big. Tried all my tricks and nothing. Tuesday and by noon it was like sitting on an ant hill. I called a dentist the Wednesday morning and they could see me in an hour and a half to flush it. Looks closer and he referred me to go see and Endo. Good for pain he asks? "Yup, 1200mg of ibuprofen and my bottle." (Act floride rinse I learned instantly dulls oral pain after flushing a few times).

Endo Confirms I may have had some complications during my root canal for my crown. So he starts immediately on a root canal to open it up and try and drain some of the abscess. Shots were the worse part and I could have slept. That's just the calm before the storm I learned. The abscess had spread up to my cheek so he ran the injection to numb it from my mouth. I think I screamed M#$()%F@#cker! in 6 languages via ESP as he jammed that near up to my eyeball while all he heard was AAAAHAHAAHAA!! as I was being choked out with latex like some weird sex act. Then the incision was made to drain everything out. Wow! Even though I was all numbed up I could feel the instant relief. After I left it was a race home to load up on another 1200mg of ibuprofen and pass out for 8 hours. When I woke it felt like I got kicked in the face by a horse.

Hard to believe I had to pay $235 of my insurance to get tortured for two hours. I got to go see that SOB tomorrow and get a drain removed and pay him yet again for another $100. You would think they would at least make Novocain in Rum flavor by now so you at least feel like you got your monies worth.

Share your experience.

[MIKA27]

Dentistry is real expensive.

Several years ago I went out to a Thai Restaurant, whilst eating, bit down on what looked like a herb pod of some sort associated with Thai food. It shouldnt have been in the food. Well, this split my tooth and I had to visit the dentist the next day. That evening however I was stuck with pain.

Anyway, went to the dentist the next day, he said (After some x-rays) that he would need to give me a root canal and place a pin through the tooth.

Well... This proved to be a three trip visit for the root canal, and once he pinned the tooth, he shaved it right down. After all this, hardly any tooth was visible above the gum-line, it turned into an Abscess, I awoke the next morning with a massive lump on the side of my mouth the size of a golf ball, went back only to be told after he drained it that the tooth would need to be removed.

Luck it is a semi back molar so it is not visible.

All up, it cost me in excess of $2K - I hate dentists!

[klassikkasp]

I had a pallet extender before getting braces as a pre teen. The orthodontist was removing the pallet extender to adjust the width. He slipped with some sort of pick and stabbed me in the back of the throat. I had to see an oral surgeon, no stitches were needed but it hurt like a bastard no fun ever at the dentist. I also had my wisdom teeth removed while I was awake. Turns out its cheaper that way so my parent's said why not. They had to break three of the teeth and pick out the peices. They were able to pull one clean. Only lidocaine shots and a vicodin the night before. They did give me some percocet after which was nice. I dislike the dentist.

[forgop]

I've seen patients on our critical care floor for dental abscesses that requires multiple days of antibiotics after an I&D.

I'd be upset at going through something that painful and not getting something more effective than ibuprofen.

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[stogieluver]

Fos, hate to hear about that terrible experience, but my main question is why all the ibuprofen?? Sounds like you missed a golden opportunity for a prescription or two of Percocet. Better living through chemistry.

[Fosgate]

Military base nearby. It's about all military medics dispense and it seems to be carrying over to civilian doctors here also. Oh well. I can still drink beer!

[Ken Gargett]

fos, that sounds like a doddle!

a few years ago, late on christmas eve, a back molar started to hurt. by early christmas morning, i was in agony.

have you ever tried to get a dentist on christmas day!!!

made endless calls and then rang the local university as someone said they always have someone on duty. got a very friendly bloke with very little english and a very strong east european accent (i'm sure that they have excellent dentists in eastern europe but i'm equally sure they don't work early christmas morning).

anyway, he was delighted. he would love to rip it out. that was what was needed. rip it out. i thought perhaps he'd like to look at it first. no problem and no need. i'll rip it out, he kept telling me gleefully. i thought this might be the last resort but i was fast approaching that.

i knew my usual dentist - a wine, lunch and fishing buddy - was away. i wondered if perhaps he'd left a message on his machine about an emergency replacement (usually it is just him and he doesn't bother) but i was wrapped up in the fetal position weeping in excruciating agony by this stage so gave it a go.

by the most fortunate coincidental error, i rang his home by mistake (i mentioned he was a mate). by pure chance, he'd had the travelling plans changed and he had come through brizzy and he and his wife decided to stay overnight at home before heading off early christmas day.

so he opened the surgery (i brought him quantities of pol roger in thanks). he took a look. my jaw was four times the normal size. it needed to come out but apparently would have been seriously dangerous to operate while it was infected and blown up. so i needed to go on a week's anti-biotics and painkillers. he'd remove it when the swelling subsided.

off to the chemist and then christmas lunch. where i sat in a corner as miserable as one could imagine.

started shovelling the pills down my throat.

a day or two before new year, a fresh problem. i was absolutely solidly jammed shut. nothing coming out for several days. and things were becoming extremely uncomfortable. no one had told me that codeine shuts everything down and i had been guzzling it like it was candy.

so about 3am, i am in serious trouble. off to the local hospital. i walk in and a more gloomy, dire place is not possible. i'm sent through to emergency. i joke to the receptionist that at least i might meet an attractive nurse. she looks at me quite oddly. i find out why.

nurse is Guido, the 6 foot 6 inch prison escapee. he is not best pleased to have drawn the late shift. explains things to me and then says i better make it from the bed to the facilities when the time comes because he is buggered if he is cleaning up my crap. he explains a doctor will be coming. i say that in the circumstances, i hope i don't know him. guido looks at me and says, 'why, are you a doctor?'

yes, guido, i'm a doctor. that is why i am in emergency for something i don't understand at 4am.

he misses the sarcasm.

don't worry, he says. you won't know him. he is much younger than you.

i sit and wait. a bloke at least 10-15 years older than me comes in. i think, christ, how bad must i look.

doc tells me he has now been on 46 hours straight and he is not happy as he has bad flu. just what one needs in your medical practitioner.

anyway, i am unclogged eventually (and very painfully). for which they slugged me about $400!

i go back.

i ring my mate.

he schedules the removal of the molar.

guess when?

my birthday.

[SofaKing]

I feel for ya, I too had an abscess in a tooth with a crown about 10 years after the initial procedure. Needless to say the Endodontist had to give me antibiotics and "redo" the 3 roots again and was told it would be painless due to no nerve endings.

BS, soon as he got towards the bottom of the canal it was painful as hell. To make matters worse he didn't believe me as a minute later he pulls a little piece of nerve tissue from the canal...he then sticks a syringe of novocane in the canal, never experienced excruciating pain like that ever!

As stated above, add me to the list of Dental haters

[Ken Gargett]

i also had the joy another time (another dentist) of having a small piece of iron come out through my inside jaw. not very painful but a bit scary. when i went to the dentist, he assured me that he thought he'd mentioned a bit broke off one of his weapons last time.

i can proudly say that i have had dentists on three different continents tell me that i am their worst patient ever.

[Fuzz]

Had 4 teeth removed when I was 13 to make room for braces. I swear dentists must be the most sadistic people on the planet. The size of the needle he pulled out to jab me looked like it was meant for an elephant or rhino. Jabbed me several times over just to "make sure" I wouldn't feel a thing. Yeah, sure mate. Pulled out a pair of pliers and proceeded to crack the teeth on the right side (left side was to be done 2 weeks later). As a kid, you do not want to hear the sound of your teeth being cracked and then seeing the pieces picked out.

Thankfully when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I went into hospital and had them removed while I was under. They were growing sideways, so the gum had to be cut, the teeth cracked and the pieces picked out. No way was I gonna be awake for that.

[oliverdst]

my wife is a dentist.

before I met her I used to go to the dentist every 6 months. now every 2 or 3... years.

[cigcars]

Gee thanks guys for all those useful horror stories. I've always had the dentists I've visited laughing hysterically when I tell them I would rather go skinny dipping in the Bermuda Triangle than get a root canal; I would rather betray Michael Corleone than get a root canal; I would rather book a two week stay in Room 1408 than get a root canal, etc., etc. They ALLLLL want to root canal you - because that's $1,500 per tooth or more. My old fashioned dentist who unfortunately retired due to age (78) always kept me clear of those guys: "You didn't need a root canal on that tooth - that tooth is cracked"; "You didn't need a root canal on that tooth," etc. for various things that either pulling or just a filling would do for. Thanks again, guys, I needed that...

[Fosgate]

My first major experience that has just caused a trickle down efffect of problems with my teeth. I grew up and had braces to give my that perfect smile my parents paid dearly for. In 2005 I was an insurance agent for the company I adjust for now. New years eve of 2005 we had about a 1/4 inch of freezing rain. Several days later I was in the office and carefully navigate the ice in dress shoes since the building owner of my office decided he didn't need to clean off the sidewalks yet. All the agents and I were meeting at a booth we had at a local farm show and I had my pickup running in the parking lot about to leave when I realized I forgot something. So I go and navigate the ice again and as soon as I step up on the sidewalk from the parking lot it happened so fast. I felt like I was launched face first into the building and I think I woke up from being out cold on the concrete. I walk into my office and ask one of the claims adjusters to check me out. Yup, your messed up buddy. Here I wrote the insurance policy for the building so now we are starting a claim on the policy seconds after it happens.

First stop the ER, skull looks fine but I can fell the tissue bulging like tape when you don't lay it down straight. Nope, no cracks she said. I remember she just had a pissy attitude like I whizzed in her breakfast cereal. Off to the next stop, a dentist. He files the back of my front teeth and top of my bottom teeth a little bit so I can close my mouth. (Bad choice.) I then get an emergency appointment to see the endo surgeon. Surgery is scheduled in a week when the swelling goes down. Oh hell, I cant go selling insurance looking like I just got whipped in a bar fight. So I take the week off.

Week goes by and I go in and he does all the painful injections. I can see everything off the reflection of the overhead light. First up, double root canal on my two front center canines. He then proceeds to fillet my gums of my front teeth like a rare fish exposing the damage roots of two of my teeth that punched forward and broke. He then stitched me up and gave me a prescription for some fine drugs and sent me on my way. That was certainly painful but I would say that he was really good with the needle putting it where it needed it and was good about keeping me drugged.

That experience taught me I should not have stopped there. I should have gotten the insurance company to fix my bite and cap my lower teeth from having to grind them down a bit. Not doing that cost me a molar and this crown on another molar. Who knows what else if I don't get it fixed.

[Fuzz]

I swear every dentist I have visited believes that when giving me a needle, not only should in first pop out from the back of my head, but that they need to wiggle it around and leave it in for several agonising minutes.

[dvickery]

Going to the dentist ... Is the only activity I can think of ... We're I would rather be doing my income taxes .

Derrek

[PapaDisco]

Holy Crap! I've got nuthin' to equal any of that!

The least painful dentist I ever had always . . . always . . . even for the most minor stuff . . . would use both nitrous AND novocaine. I'm telling you, it was grand! Never felt a damn thing.

[joeypots]

I'm good pals with my dentist. He's honest and conservative. Treats the patient and makes a great living without doing any thing that does not need to be done. As painful, difficult, and expencive as my dental work has been I have my teeth and am mostly pain free. For the most part when I hear these horror stories about terrible pain and suffering and subsequent treatment, how ever impersonal and rough, I am struck by the fact that people get relief for terrible suffering with ever increasing ease. I know people have bad experiences and I don't dismiss them, but one story illustrates my point. My buddy Curtis has had a quadruple by pass years ago and a heart valve replacement in 2013. We were chatting about doctors because we get a lot of elite MDs around here due to all of the teaching hospitals near Boston. My Pal says that he isn't impressed by the the care he's gotten, they don't follow up and are too detached after the surgeries he's had. I was stunned. He's alive I say. He concedes that's true. I think of these unbelievably complex operations he's had and the decades of life he's enjoyed and am amazed that he doesn't weep tears of gratitude when he thinks about his medical treatment.

[jazzbass]

2 years ago I was told I needed Ma$$ive Recon$truction with my bite.... Ma$$ive huh?!? Well, a million visits later I have all new teeth. I actually enjoy sitting in a dentists chair. Doesn't hurt either that my Dentist is the spitting image of Salma Hayek .......

[Fosgate]

2 years ago I was told I needed Ma$$ive Recon$truction with my bite.... Ma$$ive huh?!? Well, a million visits later I have all new teeth. I actually enjoy sitting in a dentists chair. Doesn't hurt either that my Dentist is the spitting image of Salma Hayek .......

You just reminded me of "Horrible Bosses" If I had a dentist like this I would find some way to be there every week too.

[Bill Hayes]

I've had to wear a mouthguard for years because I grind my teeth. Not much left of them now unfortunately. Got a quote 10 years ago for 50K for a full reco. Even looked into the overseas holiday to Thailand to get them fixed. Only recently did I realise I had sleep apnoea all along. Got tested and it seems I was clamping to get air past my tongue and throat. Bloody dentists just looked at the quick fix and money grab. If only we had a holistic approach back then I would have been diagnosed. Now I wear a two piece mouthguard that pushes the bottom jaw forward to allow air in. And I actually get much better sleep.

[JamesNYC]

I've had 4 root canals.

2 on the same tooth- that was the worst by far.

I had a filling that had come loose, and decay began where it ended in my tooth.

My dentist refers me to an endo and I get 4 thousand shots of Novocaine and it still hurts so bad my eyes are tearing up and the tears are streaming down my face. She finishes, and for 2 years, no problem.

Then I start having pain again, my dentist thinks it is in the tooth next to the one where I had the root canal.

Nope- it is the same one. Apparently, she had left a little bit of the root in the tooth, and over time it got worse, causing my significant pain. Apparently, the end of the root was in a very narrow and twisted part of my tooth, and despite the endo's best efforts, she couldn't get it all, so I was sent to an oral surgeon, who performed, if I recall correctly, an apicoectomy, where he went in the side of my gum and cleaned out the canal from the top of my tooth, sealed it up with gutta percha and sewed me up and $3,500 later I was healed and as good as new. Kinda. So much of the tooth had been removed that about a year later, foolishly eating cashew brittle, the tooth fractured, down below the gum line. So I had to have it removed. $850.

I am not a fan of dentists of any stripe, but I grit my teeth 3 times a year and go for a cleaning and check up to my periodontist's office.

Good luck- usually things are not so bad. Just saying....

[cigcars]

My mom had told me about how when she was a little girl (in the 1940's) dentists didn't use novocaine. They would just sit or strap you in the chair (and used those foot pedal activated drills), and go to work. She told me about the screaming and howling of pain from the youngsters with blood running down their jaws that they had to endure. Dentists - unmoved. And it would take hours for the procedure to be completed.

[Fosgate]

What I think is really stupid is that vision and dental still follows tradition and is kept separate from medical insurance despite treating deficiencies of the human body. Sure the guys that used to be dentists were barbers or about anyone who had the tools to yank your teeth but it has evolved far past that. When you think of the side effects on health that dental problems can have, why not include it all in one? It's part of the human anatomy is it not?

[Rushman]

What I think is really stupid is that vision and dental still follows tradition and is kept separate from medical insurance despite treating deficiencies of the human body. Sure the guys that used to be dentists were barbers or about anyone who had the tools to yank your teeth but it has evolved far past that. When you think of the side effects on health that dental problems can have, why not include it all in one? It's part of the human anatomy is it not?

I totally agree

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[Warren]

Oh Brother I feel your pain.

About 22 years ago I hadn't been married too long to a girl from Missouri, still am. Anyhow. I had been suffering from tooth ache for a couple of weeks and being the big girl that I am when it comes to pain I just kept taking pain killers instead of going to the dentist, actually it had been so long that at that stage I didn't have a dentist that I used.

I got up one morning and the pain pill had stopped working. I didn't realize that after a while the body builds up a resistance to them.

The pain was so intense that I was beating my head against the window of the car as my Wife tried to find a local dentist.

The local guy got me in his chair and my Wife waited out in the waiting room. He started giving me injections but just like the pills my body was having none of it. He said I had two choices. He could give me some antibiotics and come back later or he could take two teeth out now.

I thought well this pain is so bad, how much worse could two extraction be at this stage. I said take em out Doc.

I was wrong, it was worse.

My Wife was outside listening to me trying my hardest not to scream like Jamie Lee Curtis and wondering what kind of God forsaken country she had moved to where the dentists are qualified to get information out of terrorists.

The Dental nurse was holding me down while the dentist went to work with what felt like boilermakers tools.

I have since experienced worse pain, kidney stones, but that's another story.