I broke my tooth in January and since then I have made more trips to the dentist than I have in years. The broken tooth was big enough that it needed a crown to fix it. The x-rays showed not only the damage to that tooth, but to several other areas that I had been feeling pain in recently. The first priority was to take care of the broken tooth, but after that the dentist had to come up with a treatment plan that both he and I thought would work. It was more than I wanted to have done on my mouth, but I knew that it was important as my previous crowns were causing decay at the gum line that would eventually travel down to the jaw.
Two weeks ago, I returned to the dentist to take care of a broken crown on the opposite side of my mouth. The dentist was concerned that I would lose the tooth as it had quite a bit of decay. After a lot of drilling on that tooth and the one behind it, he felt confident that a crown was the best way to go. I was glad to hear that the tooth would be saved.
Today's news wasn't quite as good. Under one of the top two crowns was too much decay to save the tooth. I didn't want to have a crown put on something that would cause long term problems, so I agreed to have my tooth extracted. The process took a lot longer than I thought that it would as the root to the tooth was curved and he wanted to slowly take it out to ensure that it didn't break at the jaw line. It was also a lot more painful than I thought that it would be as it required four stitches in the end. I spent the rest of the night with ice on my face, eating soft foods and taking plenty of ibuprofen. It wasn't my favorite night ever, but I did have a temporary bridge already that should help in the long run.
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