The past 2 days I've spent a lot of time reading about people's failed root canals but I'm still unclear about a few things and I don't feel like my dentists can answer my questions.

All of a sudden last week I had tremendous pain under tooth #30 and within hours it was spreading to my ear and head. Six months ago I broke a part of #30 and its filling came out and I had it refilled. The dentist said it was an old root canal. He said one of the roots is curled and the dentist left part of the tool in the tooth and the tooth grown around it now. (When I got that root canal I decided to have it filled rather than crowned.) This dentist filled the tooth but ever since then it has been tender when biting on the new filling and I think the filling was too high, although it was not enough pain for me to do anything about it until now.

Fast forward to last week--So with this horrible pain I went to a new dentist and he took an x-ray and said tooth #30 is infected. (In the x-ray the area under the tooth is dark.) He said it's a failed root canal but his skill level wasn't enough to do a re-root canal so he referred me to an endodontist. He put me on antibiotics.

I went to the referred endodonist and she took new x-rays and said 2 teeth are infected--#30, 31 (another old root canal)--and 32 is dead. She recommended re-rooting 30 & 31 and a root canal in 32. I pressed her about how likely she would have success in #30 due to the curled canal and a hidden canal. Finally, she admitted it would have a very low probability of sucess BUT she was still recommending re-rooting. $1000 per root canal and she wanted to do the work immediately. The family dentist will put on the crowns for $500 each. I didn't trust her so I just paid her consultation fee and left.

Since reading this board I know re-rooting is not a good choice under any circumstance. Here are my questions:

1. The antibiotic is working great. Is there any chance I can leave things alone? Could the antibiotic totally kill the inflection?
2. Should get an opinion from oral surgeon about extracting all three teeth?
3. Why didn't the first dentist six months ago or the dentist last week notice the infections under the other teeth?
4. How can I be sure all the infection is removed if I get all 3 teeth extracted?
5. I don't have insurance and I'm estimating $10k+ in work to be done with implants, etc. I'm thinking about going to a referred dentist in Mexico because the costs is at least 50% less. Is that a really bad idea?

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