The tooth pain that just keeps on coming! Please help!

[greenchicken]

Desperately looking for advice. Having issues with one of my upper molars. Originally I went to have an amalgam filling replaced with a porcelain one - big mistake, as this seems to have triggered off some kind of nuclear reaction that is still on going six months later.
I ended up not being able to bite down on the tooth. Dentist took x-ray, could not see any infection or major cracks but advised on root canal treatment. He also placed an onlay on the tooth.
After this, I was delighted as things seemed to have got better, but this week (about a month after treatment) the tooth is painful again.
It is a strange sensation, not a sharp/shooting pain but a dull, tender feeling when I bite together. Went back to dentist and he seems at a loss as to what is happening, and has suggested if this continues for 2 weeks I should see an endodontist.
I don't think I can wait that long, as the sensation seems to flare up at night and has woken me up a few times.
The only thing I can think is that there is something going on in my gum, or there is a crack in the tooth that is invisible to the x-ray, but I would have thought the root canal treatment would mean that I didn't feel that.
I am partly struggling because I am finding it hard to describe this sensation and starting to feel like the dentist thinks I'm making it up. I'm also worried about the cost - if I have to have another root canal re-treatment which fails, am I looking at an extraction and a bridge? The cost of these two extra treatments, on top of everything else, makes me panic (I'm in the UK but went for a private dentist for the initial treatment, so have been paying private prices ever since).
Any advice on what may be going on, or how to help my dentist understand the problem more (are there some common terms to describe pain sensations?), would be much appreciated.

 

[ScaredyCat22]

I do feel for you, you could practically be telling my story. I had never had a toothache in my life until I was talked into having an old amalgam filling replaced. I was in constant pain ever since.
I am not familiar with porcelain fillings, I thought that was only used for inlays and onlays. They replaced my amalgam with a composite filling and I will agree with your term that it was like a nuclear reaction.

When you have a root canal even though that does remove any feeling in the tooth it does not remove the feeling in any surrounding tissue and jaw bone.
when I had mine root canaled they told me "you will never feel this tooth again." And although it did rid me of the excruciating sensitivity to cold, where even room temperature water was too cold for me, it did not rid me of my pain or give me the ability to chew on the tooth.

In my case it was a vertical root fracture. they do not show up on xrays. I hope that is not the case for you.


If a root canal retreatment fails then usually extraction is what happens next.

You would not necessarily have to get a bridge. You can replace a tooth with an implant, or a partial denture, or even leave the empty space if you find you are able to get along without a tooth there.

 

[ScaredyCat22]

Also if your pain is only when you bite down on food or when your teeth are together it could be as simple as needing a bite adjustment.
my pain was all the time.
maybe they just filled yours too high