Hi Mugzilla,

As you know from our previous lengthy private discussions, I am in the dental profession and I am here to help. And just to be clear, I am not part of the Ponzi scheme to profit from the misery of others. Although I can understand based on your past dental experiences as a child, how you've came up with that, like many, many other people you only see a dentist when you have a toothache. So you are going to be treated as a triage patient which is very different than say someone who sees a dentist with some regularity.

The tooth that you had re treated is still infected and it will remain infected simply because the second root canal did not alter/remove the contents of infected nerve tissue inside of those hundreds of tiny canals, of which you and I have talked about many times. Whether or not you have symptoms that "appear" to come from that tooth, #30, is irrelevant as the tooth is still infected. The "new" abscess on tooth #31 that seems to have just suddenly appeared is not new because abscesses do not occur overnight. It may be new on the new xray, if you have had previous xrays of that tooth that were negative, but that is only because it is now large enough to show up radio graphically. Most likely that tooth #30 infection is directly related to the chronic infection that you have in the recently re treated tooth #30. As you may recall, I explained to you that the bacteria residing in infected teeth will eventually proliferate to the adjacent teeth. Tooth #18 has also had to be brewing for some time as the abscess does not just happen. If I remember correctly, you were adverse to having xrays taken of your mouth. In that case, perhaps #18 would have showed up sooner.

I have privately provided a great deal of information to you on the subject of infected teeth. If you were to read any of that, you would see that you only have 3 treatment options when your tooth becomes infected:

1) Root canal
2) Surgical apicoectomy (which is a surgical root canal)
3) Extraction

Number 1 and 2 do not cure the infection as there is no access to remove the nerve tissue from inside of the hundreds of tiny canals. This nerve tissue becomes gangrenous tissue. The bacteria from the tooth eventually proliferates to the adjacent teeth and beyond. I know that scares the hell out of you but those are the facts... nothing can alter the anatomy of the tooth, it is what it is.

Number 3, removal of the tooth before the bacteria proliferates offers the best outcome for curing the infection. The longer the infected tooth is present in the jaw bone, the more difficult it will be to eradicate all of the bacteria from the jaw bone. I know this scares the hell out of you too, but you have the right to be informed of the consequences of retaining those teeth.

Only you can decide what is most important to you, no one else can decide that for you. So your decision basically comes down to... One, your overall health, how important that is to you and what you think is best for the long term. Two, allow fear of the extraction to keep consuming all of your thoughts and prevent you from removing the infected teeth before they cause further problems. I certainly realize the difficulty in making this decision and that you keep wanting to hold on to a "miracle" that your situation will be different. I wish I or someone else could offer you that miracle, I really do.

In the recent past I gave you a lot of information on root canals, infected teeth and so forth. I made some suggestions to get you some help for your dental fear and anxiety. Have you taken a look at any of that?

I feel badly for you, I understand your fear. But your health is at stake and just because your dentists are not telling you that doesn't make it not so. Please read the information I provided you.

Bryanna