I was just wondering, what exactly is a root canal? What is it for? I've never had any work done on my teeth so I really have no concept of oral surgeries.
A root canal is when you have a very rotted tooth and basically they scrape all the inside of the tooth out (the infected part which at that point of root canal is almost all of it) then the fill the tooth with a rubber material and put a cap on it. Its supposed to be very painful... Its not usually just the exposed part of the tooth, but the entire tooth all theway into the gums.
I had a root canal, but my tooth wasn't rotted...not even close. I had a deadened nerve caused my a cyst above my nerve. It didn't hurt until they gave me a numbing shot in the nerve of my tooth...OMG!!! The hygenist goes it will only hurt for a few seconds...As soon as my dentist stuck that needle in my nerve, the tears were rolling from my eyes! It hurt so bad for like 15 seconds...Still gives me chills to this day. But for the rest of the night my face was numb and he gave me pain pills to help with the pain. It wasn't extremely bad, but its not something I'd want to go through again.
That sounds horrible. I can't even go in to get my teeth cleaned without being sedated. I hope I will never have to get surgery in my mouth... though my wisdom teeth are probably impacting as we speak. Oh well.
3 of my wisdom teeth are coming in, but they aren't really hurting. I'll probably have to have them cut out though. I have a problem with crowding teeth, so that really sucks. Just be glad if you never have to have a root canal. Pulling teeth is like nothing compared to a root canal. Its like sleep lol.
If they're coming in at an angle, get them taken out before they're impacted. I waited too long, and after the surgery over I was in so much pain, I can't even describe it. (I took painkillers, which helped considerably). Alex
I've had root canal done. It was on one of my front teeth too which was pretty bad, well one next to a front tooth if you know what I mean. Mine was from a previous dentist being unhygenic when doing some other work years before on my front teeth. I got a really really bad infection years later and had no choice but root canal even though the tooth looked normal and healthy. If you get funny throbing pains shooting up towards your nose (or down to towards your chin if a bottom tooth I imagine) then thats a bad sign of infection in the root needing canal work. Which is what happened to me. If it happened to a back tooth I'd get it ripped out if it wasn't going to affect anything else, less painful! I had about 5 appointments all together and it was the most painful thing I've ever done in my life. Afterwards I felt that child birth wouldn't be so bad as root canal is definately worse!
I was kinda wondering about that.... why not just have the tooth pulled.. But i suppose if it was in front like August moon's its probably the more logical option
I had a root canal when I was 6 years old. My mom told me it was just a filling, so as not to scare me, but I kept thinking that it was too painful to be a filling. Then a few years later, my dentist mentioned the root canal, and I was like "Ohh, so that's what that was..." I never had overly bad teeth, so I don't know why I needed a root canal when I was only 6. It reeeally hurt though .
I think if you have a bad enough cavity in one of your baby teeth, it can effect the adult tooth that will later come in. Then again, I wouldn't really know since I've never had a cavity, I would just conclude that much. I think you can do nerve damage too.
