My dentist looked at it, shook his head in dismay, and said "There's nothing I can do to fix that."

These are not words you want to hear from your dentist.

Several weeks ago I had some pain in that area, extreme sensitivity to cold. I had my dentist check it out then and he took an x-ray, but nothing showed. My sinuses and the roots of my upper teeth are very close, both my dentist and my ENT (ears/nose/throat) guy have told me that and also that some tooth pain may be caused by my sinuses (and vice versa). This tooth may have had the crack beginning back then, but it did not show in the x-ray (crack parallel to plane of x-ray picture, nothing would be apparent).

Finally my dentist said he wanted to send me to my periodontist (yes, I have three dentists: my general practice guy, a periodontist and an ondodontist). Fortunately Dr. Nager was in his Naragansett office that day (only a mile or two from Dr. Lodge) and he could see me if I came right over.

He also shook his head in dismay. The way the crack ran down to the roots there was nothing he could do. He said we could try a crown, but in his opinion there was not enough solidly grounded tooth to hold and he didn't think it would work at all.

Yesterday afternoon (Thursday) I went up to his Cranston office and he gently extracted the tooth. It feels so much better. Yes, obviously I have some soreness from the extraction, but I hadn't realized how much constant pain I'd been in the past week or so from that tooth, I'd kind of adjusted to it mentally, but oh it feels so good now with that pain gone.

Now I've got to wait until into July for a decision as to what to do for a permanent solution: bridge or implant. I think I'd prefer an implant (screwed into place) but there's apparently some question about my bone right there plus those sinus cavities.

Now you know more than you wanted to know about my teeth, right?

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