Should I still feel pain during a root canal after taking out my roots?

[Thxswxzxy]

Last year I needed a root canal on one of my back molars. My dentist cleaned the decay and had to put some sort of medicine in the tooth a few times. During this process, even though I was injected with anaesthetic in my cheek and a few times in the gums surrounding it, I still felt some hard pain and it really scared me.

On the final visit I was feeling a strong pain even with multiple numbing shots and one in the cheek. At one point she injected it into my gums once again in a similar spot and I felt a sharp pain in the same place, then it went away and I couldn’t feel it anymore. She proceeded to clean out my roots and patch up the tooth, but with a temporary filling as she said I still couldn’t chew on it and it needed a few more visits.

I put this off for almost a year now as I’ve been scared and the bits of temporary filling have started to chip off. Occasionally when I have chewed on it by accident once or twice I’ve still felt some pain.

My next visit is on Tuesday and I’m really worried that I will feel that sharp pain again. I don’t want to and I don’t trust anaesthetic because it never worked on the first try.

Could someone tell me what is left to fix this tooth? Any more drilling or pain? I know she has to do a crown but should I expect more pain, especially since it has been almost a year since and I know I still have feeling in the tooth?

Ideally I want to be sedated or put on some sort of gas, because there have been too many times that I’ve trusted anaesthetic and then I still feel pain, so I’m terrified of the dentist. But when I asked them about it, they said they don’t do it to people my age unless it is really needed. I’m 20.

 

[Gordon]

I don't know what stage in the root treatment you've got to, so it's a bit of guesswork on my part.

It's not likely that you'll feel anything painful at all, if the root canal has been finished and it's just the crown left to do. You probably wouldn't even need any local at this stage.

If the root canal isn't finished then it's still pretty unlikely that it'll be painful but you would still need some local anaesthetic just in case there's still a few nerve fibres still in there.

You're feeling tenderness on biting doesn't affect whether you'll feel any pain during treatment.

Inhalation sedation if the practice offers it would be a great help to you I expect.

Some of your issues are covered here a little bi, might be worth a quick read: https://www.dentalfearcentral.org/forum/threads/unable-to-get-numb-what-to-tell-dentist.37290/

 

[Thxswxzxy]

@Gordon thank you for the reply! I had my first appointment since last year today and it went well. They don’t do inhalation sedation, so I was worried going in and to make matters worse I got told being anxious makes the anaesthetic wear out faster, but that just made me more worried in turn that I would start feeling pain any moment (fortunately that didn’t happen). They were going to give me local anaesthetic in my gum only before opening the tooth and checking the nerves, but I didn’t trust it so I asked for my whole left jaw to be numbed (I believe an IAN block?) so I could be calmer as I think that numbs more, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on that.

The dentist removed my temporary filling and said it surprisingly held up better than expected for a whole year. They cleaned out my nerves and I felt a slight poking pain but it wasn’t anything scary. She then put a bit of padding in and sealed it with a fresh temporary filling, and said that in my next visit she will fill the tooth in for good. Surprisingly enough she said I could start chewing on that side (first time in 1-2 years) but start with soft foods only and build it up. She filled my nerves so I hope next time she doesn’t need to clean them out again and just fills it. Overall it wasn’t as scary and you were correct, thank you very much!

 

[Gordon]

Thanks for the update and well done you for going through with it. Doing something like that when you're so scared takes real courage, so you should be very proud of yourself.

You're quite right, a block injection does numb a bit more than an infiltration especially in the lower jaw, we normally call them IDB's in the UK.

You've really done all the hard bits now, the rest of the treatment is much easier