Need advice with my situation

I had a root canal on tooth #30 back in April. I didn't have a crown put on at that time because I didn't have dental insurance to cover it. The tooth started to become sensitive to the touch and aching in my jaw off and on about a month after the procedure. In July, I was able to begin the crown work and the tooth was highly sensitive to the touch. Brushing it lightly was terrible.

My dentist thought the crown might help it and so we went ahead and did the crown work. About a week after that, the tooth started to feel the same way. I went back to my endo and he looked at all the xrays and said they look perfect. He offered to redo the root canal and I did that, too. He told me to give it a month with the canals filled with medicine and see how the tooth does before he completes it. Well, it's been a month and the tooth is highly sensitive to the touch again. My jaw will ache off and on at times, too.

I called his office today and he said that he doesn't want to complete the root canal until the tooth has settled and no longer has pain. He also said that since it's been a month already that the tooth most likely will need to be extracted.

That is my question and dilemma.

Part of me is afraid of rushing to have the tooth extracted if there is "possibly" a chance that this is being caused for another reason and the tooth is actually fine. There is also the other part of me that can't continue to live with this and deal with this every day. It's so uncomfortable to talk on some days even. Now the temp crown is coming lose and that really aggravates it.

I just keep thinking about how my general dentist said the xray looked fine and my endo took a 3D xray and said he could find nothing wrong. He also looked very carefully during the redo and didn't find any missed canals or cracks. So why this sensitivity to touch? They both said that there could be a crack that can't be seen.

What would you do? I would love to hear others opinions because I just don't want to make a mistake. I pulled two upper molars back in my 20's and regret that to this day.

Thanks so much for any advice you can give. I just need to make a decision on waiting this out longer or having it pulled.

I would also be very hesitant to pull a tooth, unless they can figure out what is definitely wrong.

Was the 3D scan that you had a CBCT scan? Was it a high-resolution scan of just that area?

Have they done dye tests on your tooth?

Is there any possibility that you are grinding on that tooth? Have you tried a mouth guard at night?

I had a cone xray at the endo's office. Everything looked perfect.

I do not have a tooth above this one so there is no biting surface of another tooth grinding on it.

No dye tests have been done. My general dentist and endo just jump to extraction. It's almost like they've checked off boxes of possible things and when they don't fix the problem they seem to give up and immediately go to extraction.

Why would both dentists say the xray look perfect and the endo say that he could see very far down and no cracks or missed canals. I just don't get it.

To top it all off, I just started a new teaching job and I cannot take off work to have this all figured out. It's frustrating. That's one reason I sometimes feel that extraction would be one appt and done. Believe me, I wish I could have this thoroughly tested.

I guess I could ask my dentist to re cement the temp crown for now since it's very loose. I don't know what to do.

could be a fracture too small to see.
The real question is how much longer can you deal with it? If you don't want to have it extracted i would definitely have the temp recemented...leaks can cause decay to what is under the crown.
Most of my teeth were still sensitive with a temp crown and didn't settle until the permanent was placed. Are you sure no tooth hits it at all? Has your dentist mentioned evidence of grinding? If you grind side to side an upper tooth may be hitting it even though there isn't one directly above it.

I wouldn't want to pull a tooth either so i'd probably just try to deal with as long as i could.