• Dental Phobia Support

    Welcome! This is an online support group for anyone who is has a severe fear of the dentist or dental treatment. Please note that this is NOT a general dental problems or health anxiety forum! You can find a list of them here.

    Register now to access all the features of the forum.

Nerve pain rather than dental?

M

MJMoore

Junior member
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
8
Location
UK
Hi - new member, but have read quite a lot of the forum recently. It's a wonderful place! :) I do have dental anxiety, but my main query at the moment is a general dental one.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has experience of nerve pain within a gum, mimicking toothache? A little history.. lower right, first two molars had root canal and crowns many many years ago. About 15 years ago the middle molar was extracted, and then a couple of years ago the crown on the first molar snapped off, leaving me a root behind. Last molar was simply filled.

I started to experience some pain in the root a while ago, with very occasional pain in the back molar. X-rays didn't show any problem, and there was no response to tapping the teeth, or to hot and cold. This pain started intermittent, then became pretty constant.

I had the root extracted (under sedation, because when I had the filling redone on the back tooth, it didn't numb well, and it worsened nay fear), and after a while that pain settled, but not straight away.

Then, the back tooth seemed to take over.. but when bad the pain seems to go along the gum, to just under the incisor, and it's a burning type pain. Last Friday I had a root canal in that back tooth. The dentist thought he could see a tiny infection under it, but I'm not sure he was convinced, and antibiotics didn't make a difference. I had a bad recovery from that, but the really bad pain is now gone since he filed the filling down for me. However, the pain I had before is still there, and is a little worse than before.

According to the X-rays, the main nerve does run very close to the root. I have wondered for a long time whether this was a nerve problem rather than dental, and my dentist seems to be starting to think the same way now.

I'm going back on Tuesday, and I think I now need to decide whether to have that back molar taken out. If nerve damage is there and permanent, it may not help, but if it's the back tooth irritating the nerve, maybe it will help stop the problems? Obviously that will leave me with no lower back molars, but I think I'd rather cope with that rather than have this persistent pain.

Sorry this is so long, but I think the history is important. If anyone has any experience, or ideas, I'd ver grateful.. thank you for reading!
 
I'm guessing I'm unusual then?! On Tuesday evening he tried to make a small change to the root canal, saying the filling had extended out of the tooth. As he went to clean the very bottom again, I had the most excruciating pain.. I swear he hit the nerve. He carried on, was happy with the root canal, but the pain wasn't going.

I've to be in a LOT of pain, so am going back this morning to have it extracted.. which I'm terrified about, but it has to be done.

interestingly though, he is now starting to agree with me, that a lot of my issues could have been nerve related.
 
I'm sorry to hear you may have nerve pain. Hopefully after you have the molar extracted the pain will go away. I had nerve pain after I had alot of work done on a right side lower molar. It eventually went away with the help of medication. Good luck:)
 
Thank you. Extraction was straightforward, so that was good. I'm now really nervous as to whether I'll have much pain after.
 
Did extraction cure the issue? I have a situation that is quite similar. I'm hoping a new bridge over the area will solve the problem, but not feeling very optimistic about it (nothing has helped much so far!). I suspect the pain is at least partially neurogenic. It's maddening, hope you had a resolution!
 
Unfortunately I've had a a bad infection, so have been in too much pain to really assess the original problem. The antibiotics are finally starting to work, so I'll post again soon and let you know.
 
Unfortunately I've had a a bad infection, so have been in too much pain to really assess the original problem. The antibiotics are finally starting to work, so I'll post again soon and let you know.
Ooh, that sounds like what I went through also! Hope the antibiotics kick in and you start feeling a whole lot better!
 
Back
Top