Anybody a dentist?

[M GO BLUE!!!]

I've had some work done... both on my mouth and my wallet. I might have a problem...

I had went to a dentist who said I had to get a crown and a root canal. He did the crown, then his office screwed up the billing very badly so I never went back. (They conveniently lost their end of the receipt for the deposit and forgot to mark it in their recoeds. My copy corrected the mistake. They then double billed my credit card two weeks apart.)

I still had pain from the tooth that had the crown done. More than the one that needed a root canal. I went to a second dentist who found that the tooth that needed a root canal just needed a deep filling. (That tooth is now fine.) He then found that the tooth in front of the one that had the crown was in terrible shape. I had the root canal. I didn't have the money to get a crown on that tooth (He neglected to tell me the $1500 was only for the root canal. That the crown would be another $1500.) He put in a temporary filling. This has been about 4 months.

For the past two months I have been feeling an ache in the tooth that had the root canal. It is getting worse, and I have noticed that there has been blood when I floss and brush. I just looked as closely as I can at the tooth and the inner gumline is very red. The area below that is also slightly darker than the rest of the gums. The tooth is also slightly loose.

1. Is this infected?

2. Will I likely lose the tooth?

3. Should I find another dentist? This guy is expensive as hell, but convenient as hell too.

4. Can I possibly make it to January? (Then I will be on another year's insurance.)

(You would think if you shell out the price of a used car for getting two teeth fixed there would be some sort of warranty... Like if you give a guy almost $3000 to fix your teeth and it doesn;t work out, at least try and fix it for free!)

[RGunner]

I'm not a dentist, but I've had lots of tooth problems, some a while back and some very recently and close to what ur experiencing...I had the same problem with my tooth and gums, and my dentist, who is a family friend of ours, told me it was infected, and that i needed to get the root canal checked out to make sure that it was fully done, and turns out, when it was infected before, when they drilled the hole in it to drain all of the infection out, some did not make it out for some reason because they did not leave the hole there long enough.

When I went back and got them to drill the hole (this was my front tooth, was probably the worst pain i ever had in my life and ive had about 15 different surgeries including brain surgery 4 times) they left the hole there for about 2-3 days, then i went back in and they proceeded to do the root canal. This was about 2-3 months ago, and my parents and I could not afford the crown getting put on so they did the filling thing like you, and i have not experienced any pain whatsoever since. Now I'm not a dentist, but it seems like we have had the same pains, and my second trip in getting the whole infection out seemed to do the trick, i dont know if thats the case with you.

If the pain is somewhat bearable, you might be able to make it to January, however, toothaches, from experience, are so unbearable to me that I would not be able to last, however you may be more bearing on that. I doubt you will lose the tooth, unless the infection completely takes over the tooth and makes it unfixable, which is one possibilty i was informed of.

These are just my opinions based on what I went through, but seeing as how my parents pay for mine, its a little different on the checkbook cuz i know this stuff is killer expensive. Have you said anything to the previous dentist that wrongfully gave u a root canal and such?

Hope it all works out.

RGunner

[Bonegavel]

Isn't this the opening line of over half of the Monty Python Flying Circus sketches? :)