Severe tooth pain after trip to dentist

[jacqui835]

Hi,

well I am one of those people who is petrified of the dentist; in fact, I avoided going to dentists for over 10 years. I am now 26 and recently went to the dentist because I thought I had a hole in one of my teeth. Fortunately, that particular tooth was fine and miraculously, the dentist told me I have very good teeth. That said, he did find one cavity on my back lower molar on the left and told me I would need a filling. I was petrified but he seemed really nice and competent so I booked an appointment to return and got myself together.

The filling was fine really, he even sprayed some numbing chemical on my gums so the initial needles didn't hurt. The cavity turned out to be a lot deeper than we thought it would be, and eventually he had to stop drilling because he had reached the base of the tooth/nerve. That said, I saw from the photos he took during and he explained that he had removed most of the decay and in some cases, teeth were able to heal themselves a bit. From the pictures I saw the decay had gotten darker as he went further into the tooth but then started getting lighter again and was quite faint by the time he had to stop. He had filled it with a white filling and I went on my way.

That weekend, 4 days later, I started trying to use the tooth more and suddenly had bad pain. I booked a trip to an emergency dentist as mine wasn't open on weekends and without even really looking at my tooth, they told me I needed a root canal. Well, I was even more scared of this than I had been of the filling so I left without a root canal (they seemed quite annoyed at me) and decided to wait until Monday. The pain went away entirely with some pain killers so I forgot about it.

Since then, I've had pain on and off with this tooth. I hardly used it and chewed on the other side as much as was possible, but I still often found that after dinner it was bad again. Not so bad that I needed pain killers though. Finally, 2 weeks after the filling, I went back to my dentist. He had a look at it and said the tooth looks healthy and tested it and found it to be alive so he doesn't want to do a root canal thank god. X-rays looked good too. He did say though that the filling was a bit high and drilled it down there for me. That was fine for the most part, but every now and then it felt like he hit my tooth rather than the filling and that was agonising - felt similar to if I had put my tooth against an iceblock but the pain went away as soon as he stopped. Once he was finished, my tooth felt much better and I could bite without any pain.

So I went home and tried to eat my dinner properly with both sides of my mouth. Big mistake it seems. An hour or so later, I was in the worst pain I can remember, to the point where I found myself almost groaning without even realising. I had to go to a late night chemist and they sold me Nurofen Plus. I took 2 of those 45 mins ago and I can still feel pain, and quite a bit really, but at least it's taken the edge off and I think I might even be able to sleep.

I just want to know, can it just be the events of today that have caused this pain? I really don't want to lose any of my teeth and I don't want any dead teeth either but this pain is excruciating. I feel like to be in this much pain there must be something seriously wrong but I just wouldn't know because this is my first piece of dental work. And if it was from today, what do I do to stop this pain? Or when can I expect it to stop?

When should my tooth be back to normal again, or do teeth with fillings always feel a bit different afterwards?

Thanks and I'm sorry for the long post, just thought it might help to have all the information.

 

[Dr. Daniel]

Thanks and I'm sorry for the long post, just thought it might help to have all the information.

Your post was not too long and contains only good and relevant information.
It is difficult to answer without examining you, but I will do my best:

A filling should sit well eventually. The current sensitivity/pain can happen in any deep filling. Why? the tooth (the nerve to be exact) becomes a bit inflamed because of the mechanical and chemical irritation during the making of the filling. If the tooth becomes sensitive, especially to cold, but slowly becomes less and less sensitive (it might take up to 6 weeks) this means that the nerve is calming down slowly. But if it is an extreme pain, or the sensitivity do not improve, it should be treated with a root canal treatment.

It sounds that your dentist has tried to avoid a root canal treatment as much as possible .

The key here is to diagnose what is the reason for your pain. It could be what I wrote above or that the filling does not bind well to the enamel, the filling was too high but now healing, a crack in the filling/tooth, leftovers from the filling material in the gums....

If you are too tired from the pain, tell it to your dentist. Most likely a root canal treatment will put the pain to an end, but again, I cant be sure without checking you.

All the best,