Ice and a Dental Appointment

I braved the ice this morning to go in to town for my semi-annual dental appointment. I had my teeth cleaned and examined. The dentist is dying to replace my old fillings with crowns but I can't see it. They aren't leaking and crowns cost a fortune. The last time I had a crown prep, the dentist accidentally got into the nerve. That called for a root canal and the new crown. Then the root canal blew up and I had to go see an endadontist who came to Bartlesville from Tulsa. He said there was only a 30% chance we could save the tooth. I was committed so I went ahead with the procedure. A month later it developed an abscess.

The dentist gave me an antibiotic and the abscess cleared up so I could have the extraction. A month later, I went in to have it done but the abscess had not returned. I chose to cancel. I did not want to lose another tooth. As a teenager, I had lost two, one second molar and one first molar. I had the first molar bridged when I was grown and married.

The dentist warned me that not extracting an abscessed tooth could injure my heart as the infection poured into the blood stream but by this time there was no abscess so I chose to take a chance. That has been ten years ago and the abscess has never returned. I still have the tooth.