Fear of root fracture after root canal

[Susan B]

Hi,

I am having severe anxiety right now. I have dental fear since going through a lot of pain with wisdom tooth removal and orthodontic treatment in my teens.

I had not a lot of issues since two years ago and was fine but now everything seems to go very wrong and my anxiety is making me insane. I am almost unable to make decisions at this point.

I cracked one of my teeth 5 weeks ago. There was a crack line and my dentist tried to fix it by extending an existing filling. I still was in significant pain after and was send to an Endodontist.
The Endodontist recommended temp crown and wait a few weeks. 3 weeks later I still could not bite on the tooth and hat constant pain which improved over the time but did not go away.

I got a root canal now and 4 days everything seemed fine. Then I got pain so bad I could not sleep. The Endodontist put me on methylprednisolone dose pack. ( I cannot take ibuprofen which would have been first suggestion)
I am at day 2 and in severe anxiety with the weekend coming up as I still have significant pain I can barely control with Tylenol.

I am so scared of having fractured my tooth root and be in so much pain again. This happened to me last year and I had to wait weeks until someone had the guts to send me to extraction.
I am also scared to loose another tooth and soon to have no teeth.

Please anybody some advice on how to move forward. I am back at the endo next week but scared things will worsen on the weekend. Not sure if I should call again or not tomorrow if things are not better.

Sorry for rambling.
Susan

 

[Susan B]

sorry I have to add on to this as I think I just figured out what causes me a lot of pain. When I pull back the corners of my mouth on the right the muscle contracting pushes against my back molar. That one had the root canal recently. This hurts a lot.

Is this more indicative of a root fracture or could it just be inflammed tooth ligament or some swelling etc that causes this ?

 

[Gordon]

Sorry but it really sounds like a fracture, it may involve the nerve in which case a root canal might fix it, but unfortunately with fractured teeth there are no certainties at all.

 

[Susan B]

@Gordon Thank you for your honesty. I got an appointment for Monday and codein for pain now as well as the methylprednisone.
The root canal was already done and it got worse a few days after.

I see not much of an option right now as to wait until I can be seen. But it is three more days and I have a lot of pain. Probably anxiety etc making it worse.

Do I have any other option to speed this up? What would I tell them ?

Last time this happened I was send away by different doctor saying I had neuropathic pain. I am incredibly scared this happens again and they just think I am hysterical woman. I had to suffer two more weeks because of this last year before extraction which was another two weeks of pain.

 

[Gordon]

If you're able to localise it to a particular tooth and with reproducible symptoms, then it's pretty clear what it is, so hysterical woman diagnosis would be a stretch.
If it's still painful post RCT then the only thing left which may help is to try a temp crown to basically hold the tooth together. Might work but (honestly again) probably won't. Sorry.
Cracked/split teeth are a total nightmare, so unpredictable.

 

[Susan B]

@Gordon thank you. I started with temp crown. It was better than now but still pain after three weeks. So opted for the root canal. But after getting a bit better it is a total nightmare right now.
Temp crown was taken off at my last visit to exclude trauma from occlusion as it felt a bit high.

Hearing your response makes me realize how incompetent or dismissive to woman my last doctors were. Two endodontiats told me this was neuropathic and I lost 14 pounds and was months in pain. My general dentist send me to emergency extraction in the end.

I have different doctor now but she is new to me too so I am just scared it could go down a similar path. It is even more scary to me than loosing the tooth. Which is huge anxiety of mine as well right now.

 

[Gordon]

Hearing your response makes me realize how incompetent or dismissive to woman my last doctors were. Two endodontiats told me this was neuropathic and I lost 14 pounds and was months in pain.

At the risk of bringing politics into this, I suppose it's not a surprise given the current direction the US seems to be moving in. Very disappointing though.

It sounds like this tooth is heading for the bin then I'm afraid

 

[Susan B]

I have been back at the Endodontist. She took out everything and placed medication inside. Also given antibiotics now.

She checked again for cracks etc with the microscope. Nothing shows up.

She said it is the last thing to try and if it does get worse or not better the tooth can only be extracted.

I am scared I am pulling out one tooth after another without any good reason.

Is there any other possibility? Is it common that cracks do not show up anywhere but cause biting down pain and inflammation ?

 

[Gordon]

Is there any other possibility? Is it common that cracks do not show up anywhere but cause biting down pain and inflammation ?

I can't think of anything off hand, sorry.
Cracks never behave the same way twice in my experience, nothing related to them would surprise me

 

[Susan B]

This might be a very far fetched idea but since the filling material is out and antibiotics are in and I take antibiotics I feel a bit better.
It seems too fast to me for antibiotic to work and there was never a sign of infection.

Since I had a similar issue after my first root canal last year could this be an allergic reaction to the filling material (seems somewhat more logical than completely healthy teeth just cracking all the time)? Is it worth bringing this up to my endo ? (I am still scared she laughs at me or thinks I am crazy)
How would this be checked ?

 

[Gordon]

Root filling material is mostly Gutta Percha, as far as I'm aware there has never been a recorded instance of allergy to it.
You could go for allergy testing at a proper allergy clinic, should be easy enough to do.