hey there y'all... hope everyone is doing well

I'm here for advice and to re-affirm Bryanna's warnings... In my maybe not so humble opinion root canals should be CRIMINALIZED!!!

I am so ****** off by what I have learned tonight reading these forums and others!!

about 4 years ago I had two root canals done... about 2.5 years later when biting down on an ice cube and feeling a strange mild pain deep in the jaw that felt like there was a hole going way down I realized something was amiss...

I did some Google searches on the subject and unfortunately the majority of my search results were ADA-backed FILTH "science" claiming that maybe only 5% of root canals go bad... which of course led to me doing the math and wondering what ridiculous eight ball I was standing behind to have two simultaneously fail for a cumulative failure percentage of .25%!!! not even 1%!! it also led to me wondering if maybe I was imagining things and there was no bacteria tunnel carving its way down. (although don't worry I didn't wonder that for very long heh)

well reading Bryanna's posts here tonight everything is clear and I just can't believe this garbage has been going on for over 100 years... how is that possible???

when I went in to have two lower first molar cavities treated I was asked extraction or root canal... I said extraction... dentist says "are you sure?" and sounded alarmed and said that root canals could save the teeth... I ask him to describe the procedure since I had been raised on 1970s comedy as a kid that made it clear they were frightful...

he described it and it didn't sound like it would be painful... however when he said that the top of the tooth would be sealed off this immediately rang a warning bell in my head since I remembered from high school the term "anaerobic bacteria" or bacteria that don't require oxygen... I asked him wasn't it a bacterial ** dream to be sealed in to a confined space with enormous amounts of food, the host entity's alarm system compromised by virtue of an extracted nerve, and no need for oxygen?

both he and his dental assistant laughed at me and said I was being paranoid... I asked again are you sure... he replies yes they are very thorough in removing all bacteria and would put me on Amoxycillin to be sure it was all gone... I still felt uneasy about it... however his assistant's trim figure, bountiful boobs, and beautiful smile made it difficult to keep all the oxygen going to my brain to perform the important reasoning functions it was being called upon to do in the twenty minutes they gave me to decide my course of treatment!

the treatment was quick, easy, mostly painless, and the regimen of Amoxycillin allayed my fears somehow... he said nothing at all about scheduling followup x-rays to make sure everything was ok... just sent me home with a bill and a smile

not only have the bacteria eaten their way through a good bit of my lower right jaw, but I think they may have even escaped into my neck tissue

when I turn my head to look at something I feel a soreness in the neck muscle that has a bit of a throb to it

I am gripped by paralyzing fear when I visualize surgeons fiddling around with anything adjacent to the jugular vein... and while I am not a particularly vain person it bothers me quite a bit that extreme debridement procedures could leave me with a lumpy misshapen jaw and distorted smile muscles... also how exactly does a surgeon "scrape" away bacteria on a neck muscle without damaging the muscle further??

as if all that wasn't enough I'm even afraid of the anaesthetic phase of the procedure which should be my one solace! what if they use nitrous oxide and I end up having its equivalent of a bad acid trip? the last thing I need in this idiotic mess is to be reliving some of the horrors of my childhood while some guy is messing with my neck

finally, the entire idea of "saw and scrape" surgery seems just as retarded as the criminal root canal procedure that initiated this jaunt into hell in the first place!! some surgeon is going to assure me that he can scrape away organisms that are only a few microns in length with some metal device that hopefully has been sanitized?? that's the exact same line of BS the first dentist told me when he assured me he could clean all the canals of infection with his little filament-thin scraper.

so not only does the overall strategy sound doomed, but what is the cost? I'm uninsured, and I'm pretty sure this would qualify as a pre-existing condition, thus no hope of insurance... and I've read many posts on the internet where terrified victims describe their 6th consecutive visit to a surgeon for scraping which has set them back $70,000 and there is seemingly no end in sight for the treatments!


anyway apologies to anyone who has waded through all my complaining... let my story serve as a warning... take care of your teeth! listen to Bryanna! floss!

and now hopefully help me come up with some alternative to surgery hehe... there must be some way out of this mess other than surgery!

atm I'm doing the following:
brushing with aloe/tea tree based toothpaste
mouthwashing with baking soda like mix from Tom's of Maine
doing aruyvedic sesame oil-pulling sessions 2 to 3 times a day
Green Tea lozenges / brews
meditating 15 to 45 minutes a day
getting 9 hours sleep a day

tommorrow I will add to the mix:
maybe 1000 to 3000 mg of Vitamin C a day

but I recognize that all of this probably is fortifying and assisting my immune system... but I wonder if it can actually go as far as eradication of bacteria... I'm sort of holding out hope for the oil-pulling as a miracle cure... for sure all of the above has ameliorated symptoms which has contributed to peace of mind which helps make it all bearable

but I'm wondering what else can be done...

one idea I had was have a biopsy of infected jaw region done and determine exact strains of bacteria... and then somehow choose the "nuke them from space" option hehe... can anti-biotics be injected directly to the local site of infection? would that be dangerous? how is it that an immune system can hold bacterial spread in check but not go as far as eradication? somehow cold/flu viruses eventually die off... so wouldn't oral infections be subject to death as well? is there a lack of physical access for the white blood cells and what have you?


you know what the lamest part of this whole experience is? I brushed every day consistently! the way I got into this mess: during the summer of 2003 I took to chewing on alot of the great Jolly Rancher's candy well turns out a lil must have got stuck between my teeth... so the cavity did not start from the top of the tooth as it normally does but instead bored horizontally from in between two teeth... so the only way I could have avoided this is if I added time consuming flossing to the night-time mix as well

isn't that lame as hell? its like everything that tastes great in this world can kill you... whether it is juicy steak or Jolly Ranchers... and not only that, but frequent brushing is not enough to save you... heh oh well c'est la vie I guess...

I hope my warning has benefited you in some way and hopefully a cure can be found.

also I hope this post wasn't too long

take care y'all

I hear your post! I too have had MANY root canals over the years...one being my front tooth that got knocked out by a misguided hockey puck and the idiotic me not wearing a mouth guard! They had to remove that cap about THREE times to go back in several times to 'kill the nerve' they didn't get the 1st time....I TOALLY wish I knew then what I know now....because needless to say, I had a severe case of periodontal disease on my upper teeth, which by the way was the MAIN source of the 'root canals', I had had 3 done up there and now, i have full dentures just put in last week! SO, between the root canals and the HUGE METAL fillings they used 'back then', I now have the most beautiful FAKE teeth!
Bryanna is GREAT to point out these things we, the public, don't really know! Not to mention that the lower teeth are in better shape, BUT I had two down there extracted that HAD been root canaled! ARG...
I wish you MUCH success and hope you are feeling better soon! I have noticed, once the teeth where removed, that I can breath soooo much better through my nose, I feel REALLY fantastic, which I haven't felt in a LONG time....and I'm sure it was the 'infection' that is now running out of my body that was making me feel like a big young bag of ick....LOL....
Again, feel better really soon! and thank you for sharing!

Thanks for your insight! And a big thank you to Bryanna! I have been made sick by two botched root canals which I probably did not even need in the first place. Just a dentist trying to make money off of me! Was feeling fine and healthy before I had them!