Last week I thought for sure I cracked a tooth.
The pain was exquisite and would ebb and flow. At one point, I had to tuck into my hydrocodone from the hernia surgery. It was also heat and cold sensitive. Buy the time I decided I needed to get to the dentist, it was the weekend.
They saw me on Monday though.
First thing was a trip to the cat scan.
My dentist has all the cool toys.
The great man comes in, sizes things up, and shows there’s no cracks. The upper and lower teeth were both crowns. So what happens is you bite something that’ll crack a normal tooth, but the super hard crown just transmits that energy to the nerves and ligaments.
So you get bruise of sorts.
The nerve swells, the tooth moves down, and now your bite is off, making things worse. He said this is how you wind up needing a root canal when there’s no sign of damage. So, my course of action was stomach some Motrin (which tears my guts to pieces) and take an antibiotic, in case this created an infection.
A day later, things were better.
Apparently the tell here is that the pain ebbed and flowed, and got manageable with Tylenol. He said if it were an actual crack, I’d be in constant pain.
No thanks.
So who knew?
Now I do.
Inspected By Pat 
Ugh…. a bruised socket is nothing to sneeze at. In fact… sneezing would cause it to light up too. Glad that’s ALL you had… though I don’t want to minimize your experience. Anything of that nature is not fun, pleasant or to be wished upon anyone except an adversary.
What’s even MORE fun? A longitudinal crack of a tooth under the crown. A recent experience I had. Brought on by pressure over time. My old school dentist years ago had slightly over-torqued the screw in post when he did the root canal. Hence the crack.
In a “Pulpless” tooth? No nerve… no pain so… why all of a sudden is there pain with pressure? New dentist taps on it and my eyes almost pop out. “This tooth is cracked AND abscessed.” X-ray confirms… in fact, it’s damn near tunneled it’s way into the sinus cavity.
Fun times.
Only resolution at that point was extraction.
LOL…. accepting the things we cannot change and changing the things we can…. all at the same time? In this case, the “Wisdom” part was a complete no-brainer.
I swear… there’s a warranty somewhere that’s expired. Parts begin to fail. Where are the incessant and annoying calls… “Sir, we’ve been trying to reach you about the extended warranty on your CARCASS…..”
Now THAT’s a call, I just might actually be interested in.
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