Three years ago I had a very small hole in the tooth (Second Bicuspid), I only noticed it when one day while I was eating I felt a striking pain. I cleared my mouth with water and examined it. I notice the hole was tiny but deep so I made an appointment with the dentist.
When I turned up for my appointment, I explained the situation to the practitioner and he said to me that all it needed was a permanent filling. As he was about to do it, I stopped him and said, “maybe the hole should be cleared first.” He looked at me and said, “That's a good idea.”
He used an instrument which works as a suction that clears away any food. He also said to me that the hole was too small to fill and he needed to drill it to make the hole bigger. But as he did, he chipped away a big piece of the tooth. He didn't tell me what had happened, so when he had finished I had a look at it in the mirror and saw that the filling was big, but I believed that it was because of the new hole size so I didn't think anything of it.
After about two weeks the filling became weak and it was ready to fall out. I went back to the dentist and he put in a new one. A week later, a piece of it broke out and a further two weeks later it was loose. The nerve of the tooth became sensitive to hot and cold. Once again I went back to the dentist, but this time it was a different surgeon because the other one was off.
I told him that I've had to have the tooth refilled each time because the filling keeps breaking out. I explained to him that it was already paid for the first time round, he said it's o.k. and he gave me the new filling. The filling seemed to look stronger and stable. But over time, it gradually started to look smaller and cracked away at the sides.
Another appointment was made with the same new surgeon. I said to him , “It's happened again,” “No problem!” he said, “I'll fill it for you, but you'll have to pay for this one, the bosses are becoming concerned because there hasn't been a payment from you since your first re-fill.” Now I could have sat in the chair and argued that the reason why they haven't received any further payments from me is because they're still working on the same job that I already paid for in the first place, but the pain was so bad I couldn't be bothered and therefore I paid for it.
I remember thinking that if the same problem happens again, I wont be going back. Well once again it happened, but this time I decided to go to the Dental department of London's Kings College Hospital, I had to wait a while before I got seen. When I was called in, the surgeon looked at my teeth and numbed the area with anaesthetic. She filled the area with a temporary filling because the hospitals don't do permanent one's. I could feel that she was doing it properly because she was pushing it down into the hole. I realised that the reason why the filling kept breaking out every time is because it wasn't secure in the tooth.
The temporary filling lasted for almost three years, what a miracle. I never did go back to another dentist after visiting the hospital I was too afraid. But it was time for the filling to come out. I went to a different Dental surgery and the surgeon said that the nerve is damaged and it needs to be taken out. That was a daunting thing to hear, but I decided to have it removed. Afterwards he put in a temporary filling and said I need to come back to have the job completed.
A few weeks later I went back for the final procedure, the permanent filling. So far its stayed intact, but because he used an instrument to separate the tooth from the one behind it, there was a gap in between them both which was causing food infiltration.
The hospital did a good job on my tooth, but I think that some dentist are trying to find away of making more money out of you by causing more damage to your teeth so you keep going back to them again and again.
