My Experience

A tooth broke during a meal. It was determined that I needed a root canal. The preparation provided by my dentist for the entire procedure, from root canal to crown, was excellent. The physician who actually did the root canal, however, was less than communicative — getting her to tell me what was going to happen was like pulling teeth.

My dentist put me at ease almost immediately, noting that I had gotten lucky since the nerve was exposed yet I wasn’t in pain because of the angle of exposure. He had a great sense of humor and carefully laid out what he thought would happen, and what the alternatives were. During that visit, he modified the tooth and made a temporary crown. The next visit consisted of him drilling and sculpting the tooth. The initial tooth sculpting was a bit painful, mainly because I still had a nerve. I took lots of ibuprofen, which helped.

A week later, I had the root canal, but ended up in enough pain that I had to go to yet another dentist to find out the cause. It turned out that the temporary crown was sitting “high,” meaning that it hurt when I bit down, a problem easily corrected. My dentist then put in a post, but unfortunately, the tooth had broken too close to the gum, so he recommended surgery to raise the gum so that the crown would sit right. That meant that I had to go to an oral surgeon; this was now about five months after the initial visit.

The surgery went well — the surgeon was excellent and great at explaining the procedure. The surgery itself, though, was painful at times, and I was sore and bleeding for a week or so. Again, ibuprofen was very effective. After eight weeks or so, I went back to my dentist, who fit me for a crown and did a great job explaining my options. A few weeks later, he put the crown in.