beat: pretty much lost the tooth lottery this weekend

[Karak567]

So I've been having some pain in one of my teeth for the last few months. I went to the dentist a while back for it, and he did x-rays and saw nothing. He said it was probably from me clenching my teeth as a nervous habit.

It got really bad in the last 2 weeks, and I simply chalked it up to the clenching. Then my gums right by the tooth, (and no where else in my mouth), got infected, so I decided to go back to the dentist. He told me the infection wasn't a huge deal, but finding out what caused it was.

He did more x-rays and seemed a little taken aback by what he saw.

He then did a second x-ray to "confirm" before he told me.

Apparently, I have a rare, and seemingly random, condition called "root" or "tooth resorption". Essentially, one of my molars has started to dissolve from the inside out. There are no known causes for it, and he told me that I'd have a better chance of winning the lottery than this ever happening again. There was absolutely nothing I could have done to prevent this. In addition to the resorption, there was also severe damage to the nerves below the tooth.

He told me that he is tempted to write this up for a dentistry journal, that's how unique my situation is. It seemed like in his 30ish+ years of dentistry he's never seen resorption outside of a textbook.

So now I have to go see a specialist who will make the call to either inject the tooth with calcium, root canal it, crown it and hope the resorption stops or, the more likely outcome, pull the tooth, root canal and install an implant (3000+ dollars and not covered by insurance).

I run so g00t.