Oh no, toothache!
 

It started yesterday when I was eating some French onion Sun chips. It's a dull pain on the tooth between the lower right canine and molar. I woke up this morning to still feel a dull pain that seems to be more annoying than painful. I'm doing some online research and just hope it's not severe. For some reason it's making me feel depressed, not clinically depressed but just a bit under the weather sort of feeling. About two years ago I had a major toothache on the lower left molar, which had to be extracted. I'm not sure if it's too late for a dental implant, seeing that over a year has elapsed and the area is sealed by gum. I'm still considering a bridge but it's not a big priority as its "hidden." If you have a tooth extracted, can the dentist have a temporary replacement right away to hide the gap?

French Onion Sun Chips are awesome.:D

My mother has had temporary work in place after an extraction but before a bridge.

If I was from Canada, I would just walk up into my state sponsored periodontist office post haste instead of wasting time typing here in pain!

I preiviously had bridges on both sides, lower. One failed in '91. The back tooth had admitted some food/bacteria and became loose on the stump. It snapped off the front tooth -- both were not saveable.

I waited much too long to get implants (unbeknownst to me at the time). From what I can gather, you should do it within 18 months or so. Probably not as severe a time line with a single tooth -- what happens when all the teeth are missing in an area of the jaw is that the bone, absent pressure on it and tooth nerves, resorbs, as your body thinks: "Hey, here's some calcium that isn't being used, I'll just shift it down to the femur" or something like that.

Made sense 50,000 years ago but implants need that bone to be vialble. Pressure on the bone from the implants will pretty much prevent resorption, I understand.

I was told by a recent dental school grad that newer dentists these days recommend bypassing root canals and going straight to implant. Root canal fixed teeth fail before too long anyway, and if you have a bridge on it, bye-bye $$.

The bridge on the other side of my mouth failed after about 25 years and I got two implants put in. Lucky for me, the back molar was still in great shape, or rather the stump of it was. The front tooth had gone south.

Whole thing + bridge cost me about $15K and was worth it. I understand you can get top quality implants for about half price in Hungary. Could be difficulties with that but I may look into it someday if I have to spend $30K or more here.

A damaged nerve in a tooth is generally fixed by a root canal. This procedure is expensive, however, you save the tooth. When finished, there is no additional pain because the tooth is now "dead". Generally, you'll need a cap for the tooth to protect it from fracture because it has this large hole in the center.

If you extract the tooth, you're looking at over $2G for an implant.........although the combo of root canal and cap is similar.

I thought Canadians were on their own when it came to dentistry.

I've had three root canal-ed teeth fail -- they become more brittle after they're dead. One was under a crown, and another under a bridge. I had to get the bridge redone, preceded by the implants. The bridge that was lost due to the bad tooth was the second there and only a few years old.

I'm sure the approach of skipping the root canal phase would be a controversial point, specially with endodontists.

I've had reasonably good success with them. Two have been around for over five years.........one of them is brand new.

I would call up my friend who is a dentist in the morning and get a good deal on fixing it.:D