wisdom tooth + filling = PAIN. Help!

Please help. 50 year old male in otherwise good health. I need some answers, the pain is bad enough, but the lack of information from my dentist and oral surgeon on top of the pain has me in misery, disparaged.

I am having pain and wanting to know if and when it will end if it is normal to have it so long, if I should be doing anything to help it, or do I need more dental work?

Feb 5 2010 I had a left lower wisdom tooth (#17?) removed by an oral surgeon because my dentist needed it removed to get to a cavity in the molar tooth in front of that wisdom tooth. I have left jaw pain since Feb 5 made worse by chewing and talking, went back to the oral surgeon first for dry socket tooth pain days after the surgery, then a week ago for the jaw muscle pain. The surgeon explained he cut the jaw muscles as part of the surgery and it could take even another month to completely heal. Sigh. That was a week ago.

So about 4 days ago I went to my dentist to get the cavity in the molar fixed, which months before he said "might" require a root canal. But he did not do a root canal, but he did do a very large filling, and it required 2-3x the normal amount of novacaine by needed including a needle injecting into the tooth socket or whatever. That day, when the novacaine wore off, my tooth/jawbone felt like hell, burning stabbing pains. And I had my mouth (jaw muscles!) stretched wide for a good hour during the cavity procedure, which I can only imagine made my jaw muscles worse as they were trying to heal from the oral surgery where those muscles had been cut!

I continue to take ibuprofen 800mg every 4 hrs or so for the jaw muscle and tooth pain. Today it is pretty bad, moreso the jaw muscle pain (buccal muscle, masseter muscle). Tooth pain also, I imagine from the intense filling of that cavity?

So, HOW LONG IS MY JAW MUSCLE AND TOOTH PAIN GOING TO CONTINUE? WHAT IS NORMAL IN TERMS OF A LENGTH OF TIME FOR THIS TO CONTINUE?

I must say the oral surgeon and my dentist say NOTHING about these questions, they just do their procedure then send you on your way, no advice on pain management, no advice on how long and what type of pain will occur. Very very poor communication to me. This is all complicated by the fact there are two sources of pain going on, the cut jaw muscles trying to heal from the oral surgery, and the big tooth filling that might be causing nerve root pain. And that comment by my dentist months ago how that tooth (molar) might require a root canal, but then he just filled a cavity there (can I trust the cavity filling was adequate)?

PLEASE help me though this, at least help me understand what has happened, what to expect, how long my pain will continue. I am so tired of constant pain. It seemed to have been getting somewhat better until a few days ago when the cavity filling by the dentist likely reversed some likely healing of my jaw muscles, and created a whole new source of pain during the cavity filling.

Talking (e.g. 10-30 minutes on the phone) and chewing makes the jaw muscle pain worse. Hot liquids make the tooth pain worse than it already is (but I like hot coffee in the morning!). Ibuprofen every few hours makes it better, and today I just bought some naproxen sodium to give that a try since it says I only need to take it every eight hours.
Beowulf999 (randall)

If it's muscle or TMJ pain, then ice or heat packs applied to the sore areas may well help a fair bit. Try to not stretch your mouth too wide when you're eating or talking, try to keep taking Ibuprofen as it's about the best painkiller for dental types of pain and see if that can help any.

Okay guess I will stick with Ibuprofen. I have many bags of frozen peas, yes that helps. Right now the tooth pain is coming back as it has been several hours since taking pain meds. My pain now (I would say a 4 on a scale of 0-10) is half the cheek muscles, feeling tetanic/crampy, painful, a somewhat throb type pain, lower cheek where the muscles would attach to the jaw; and now also pain in my tooth that is sharper. Man this sucks!

I guess my question for anybody reading this is how many days or weeks is it normal to have pain after a deep cavity tooth filling procedure?

Gordon said:

If it's muscle or TMJ pain, then ice or heat packs applied to the sore areas may well help a fair bit. Try to not stretch your mouth too wide when you're eating or talking, try to keep taking Ibuprofen as it's about the best painkiller for dental types of pain and see if that can help any.

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I just got back from the drugstore ('Chemist'? to those of you on the other side of the pond, i.e. in the UK), bought a heating pad gizmo in a velcro sling that i can wrap around my jaw/head; also bought lots of soup so i can go easy on my chewing muscles which are in such pain, like I have tetanus or something.

Gordon said:

If it's muscle or TMJ pain, then ice or heat packs applied to the sore areas may well help a fair bit. Try to not stretch your mouth too wide when you're eating or talking, try to keep taking Ibuprofen as it's about the best painkiller for dental types of pain and see if that can help any.

Click to expand...