Hi. I don't know if this is the right forum, but I think it is. If the moderators want, feel free to move it to another.
Anyways, I am having this problem. Starting in December, I was eating popcorn and when I chewed on a hard kernel that didn't pop, my right upper molar sunk and got this big hole in the middle. In a matter of a few hours, it started to hurt like crazy, as the bacteria started to eat the pulp of my teeth. I went on an emergency consultation with a dentist the next day. So he removed the infected pulp, cleaned and disinfected the tooth and sealed it with a temporary clay. He told me the only solutuions are root canal treatment or pulling out the tooth. Researching the root canal treatment, I found it to be very invasive and aggressive to the body, even more than pulling the tooth. First, they kill all the roots of the tooth with acid, then they use clorhexidine to kill the bacteria, then they use fomaldehyde(carcinogen) embalm the roots and then finally fill it with gutapercha. Finally, they cover the tooth with a resin that contains Aluminum, artificial colors and trace amounts of Mercury and Lead, among other things. And after all this, it can still reinfect as it is impossible to kill 100% of the bacteria and an infected root canal can require extensive surgery and bone graphs to be corrected. I lead a very healthy lifestyle since I quit drugs more than a decade ago, and I didn't want all the garbagre inside my body to save one tooth. So, I extracted the tooth. After I extracted the tooth, the pain decreased a lot. I am now on antibiotics, and completely exhausted. I have felt more pain in the last 4 months than I ever did in my life.
However, now that my tooh is gone, I am already regretting it. I miss it when I chew, and I am finding it even difficult to talk. The way the air moves in your mouth becomes different after you pull a tooth, and you have to change the dynamics to talk like you did before. Not only that, but without the tooth the socket will atrophy, which causes a lot of other problems like premature ageing of the face and further difficulties chewing. I am devastated. Maybe I should have done root canal despite all the many drawbacks.
I was searching for solutions, and the only two available seem completely barbaric to me. One is called a bridge, and it's been around since the 1920's. The other one is dental replacement, which is more recent but seems even more barbaric. They literally drill a hole in the bone of your jaw(literally), then they put a screw inside and then put the pseudo-tooth there. It's less invasive to the body as a whole than the root canal, but is even more invasive than the root canal treatment locally, as it is basically a bone surgery with all the risks involved. But the worst of all is that getting a dental implant requires you to have a CT scan of your entire jawline. That is the equivalent of around 60 regular X-rays and right next to your brain. This is the deal-breaker to me. No way, no how will I expose myself to that amount of radiation, especially that close to my brain. I would only have a CT scan in a life-or-death situation where it is absolutely necessary. A CT scan puts your body through an equivalent of the same radiation of 100 chest X-rays. Think about that. No way, no how will I be having that next to my brain.
I am devastated. There is literally nothing that I can do that is acceptable for my lifestyle. And yes, losing even one tooth is a big deal. I completely changes your chewing, your speaking and leads to atrophy of the mouth which can even compromise breathing. I made the decision that seemed like the least bad at the time, and there is no going back. But I don't want to go missing a tooth, for both functional and cosmetic reasons. At the age of 40, I thinking losing a tooth is symbolic of me entering old age.
Is there something that I can do to at least preserve the socket of my tooth and not experience atrophy? Is there something that I can do at all? I would like to at least preserve the space inside my mouth where the tooth was, so that at least my breathing is not compromised. Can anyone give me any word of advice please? This forum seems to have a lot of knowledgeable people, so please help me. What is happening to me is a nightmare. I never thought I would be missing a tooth at 40 years of age.
I curse medical science. We are in 2020. That is two full decades inside the 3rd Millenium. At this point, we should just inject stem cells in out mouth and grow a brand new tooth from scratch. But this is just science fiction. There is nothing that science can do to make you gro new teeth. The options are replacements with synthetics, which involve extremely invasive and painful procedures that give you a shitty pseudo-tooth that doesn't work as well as a real one anyway.
