Hi all,

I read through a lot of these stories and the advice and solutions seemed to be very informative and helpful to the posters! I'm starting to panic about my situation and figured maybe someone can help me figure out if I'm gonna be alright.

10 years ago I was 15 and my brother knocked my left front tooth and the one next to it backwards. I got a root canal the next day and felt perfectly fine for 9.9 years up until 2 weeks ago when I woke up in the middle of the night and one of the teeth was throbbing very painfully. The endodontist that did my surgery originally is retired now, plus I moved to Boston, so I made an appointment with a new dentist the next day.

They took some xrays and noticed some small black spots up in the gums above the root canals (which looked fine, they said). The dentist recommended an endodontist to do a root canal retreatment to get rid of the bacteria and prescribed some Amoxicillin and Ibuprofen in the meantime. Today was my root canal retreatment.

The endodontist was in there for like an hour and eventually decided that he couldn't get all of the bacteria in this visit. He plugged the one tooth's root back up with 'medicine' and we made an appointment to finish the retreatment on Feb. 12th. He said I could eat normally without any issues when the Novocaine wore off. He also gave me his cell phone number and told me to call him if the area got swollen.

I got home, and in a few hours when the Novocaine wore off I ate a yogurt. Nothing hurt, really, just felt a little sensitive. After eating now the back of the tooth in question feels a little rough to the tongue instead of the smooth it felt before, even after lightly brushing it and rinsing with mouthwash.

That set me off into a bit of a panic-mode. I googled and googled and saw so many people having real issues with root canal retreats...am I panicking too soon?

Thanks for listening and understanding how scary it is to try to make decisions about this stuff!

Talk soon,

Alan