I'm so glad I found this board. I'm going to apologize for the long post in advance. I have a tooth (I believe its #13) that had a root canal 10 years ago and never really got better. The dentist who did the work told me at 6 months that pain that long wasn't unusual and everything was fine. I have always had a lot of sinus issues and had sinus surgery to correct several issues about 5 years ago. The pain I felt in my tooth was unbearable while my sinuses healed. I went to a different dentist 3 years ago who sent me to an oral surgeon, who did another root canal on the same tooth. About a year ago the filling came out and I have had nothing but problems. I don't currently have dental insurance so I have been going to dental schools and dental clinics with sliding fee scales trying to get the tooth fix or preferably removed. They keep quoting me outrageously high fees to do yet another root canal. This past weekend I woke up in extreme pain and with a lot of facial swelling around that tooth. I went to the ER who put me on keflex (I'm allergic to penicillin and sulfas) and pain killers then referred me to another dental clinic. The dentist cleaned out the tooth and then tried to "open up" the abscess so it could drain. It didn't and caused more pain than I ever thought possible. I went back the next day in extreme pain, saw a different dentist who said it looked like the jaw is infected, once again tried to get the tooth to drain, and said I probably have a sinus infection when I mentioned that lots of pus had been draining out of my sinuses on that side. He told me to stop the keflex and put me on clindamycin and a stronger pain pill and said when it heals I need to get a root canal. A couple of other things-I notice the sinus/tooth problems either happen together or one after the other, and why can't I find a dentist willing to just extract the tooth? It's cost me thousands of dollars and more lost hours to debilitating pain that I would rather have put toward work and family. I checked the website I've seen mentioned several times but unfortunately there aren't any dentists in my area. I have been using cold packs several times a day, taking 600 milligrams ibuprofen every 6 hours, rinsing with warm salt water but am still not getting any relief.