And more importantly, what’s an “unreasonable” length of time to have to wait and/or jump from dentist chair to dentist chair?
I had a tooth suddenly get painful in March. Went to my new dentist. (My old dentist retired recently.) The tooth is all decayed (the reason it suddenly started hurting was because it had broken) and needs a root canal, so I get the referral to the endodontist and get the root canal. When that heals, I go back to the regular dentist and he says that the root canal had to take more of the tooth than he expected, so now I need a distal wedge procedure. One periodontal procedure and 5 more weeks of healing later, I made the appointment with my regular dentist to get the crown. That appointment was scheduled for today, but yesterday I got a call from the dentist at 8:45am (I wasn’t awake yet, so they left a message) saying they had an emergency and would have to reschedule. I’ve called them 9 times between yesterday and today to try to reschedule and can’t get ahold of them. So…
Anyway, it’s been 6 months and my tooth is still half-done. No crown. He “built it up” to make it ready for a crown, I guess. And I’ve gotten the distal wedge done. So it should be all ready. But does all the waiting and logistics and stuff really take 6 over months to get a crown sometimes?
And, of course, I don’t even have a temporary crown yet, so I expect it to take significantly longer than it already has.
Now, the rest of this is a tangent, but I kindof suspect this wasn’t a cavity like he said, but rather a resorption. Aside from this, I haven’t had a cavity in 20 years. But I just had a resorption about 2.5 years ago. In the corresponding tooth symmetrically across from this one that’s getting the crown. Also, my regular dentist’s dental hygenist and both the endodontist and periodontist remarked that they’ve never seen a cavity on the back of the back-most top tooth like this one before. (Tooth number 2 if you’re keeping track. I had my wisdom teeth out like 20 years ago-ish.) And guess where the resorption was 2.5 years ago? (I mean, it was a resorption, so it started inside the tooth, but when it finally got to the outside surface…) it was on the back of my backmost top tooth.
Anyway, that part’s just a rant, but yeah. Am I wrong to be pissed at being strung along this long?
It does sound like your current dentist is having trouble managing appointments, but the general timeframe sounds about the same for when I had a root canal done. I had 4 separate appointments before the job was completely done. The first appointment at least stopped the pain, so I no longer felt like I was being stabbed with a knife in my mouth if I accidentally bit down on something with that tooth.
Maybe ask around other dentists if your current one is being unresponsive. Since you’vr already started the procedure you’ll definitely want to get it finished. I imagine leaving it half finished will only cause more problems for you down the line.