A crown, a crown, my kingdom for a crown

Having experienced the intake process and tooth cleaning from my new dentist and having been very impressed with both, I was interested to see if the same professionalism would be evident in a slightly more involved process - a crown.

One of the molars on the right side of my mouth broke a couple of years ago. There was a large filling in the tooth and there wasn't much to hold the side of the tooth together. But since it wasn't causing me any pain, hadn't exposed a nerve, and wasn't in danger of immediate decay, I postponed doing anything. Also, my previous dentist had put me through a very traumatic experience with the last crown I had fitted. I wasn't anxious about facing the same amount of pain and suffering.

But Dr. Fife convinced me that it really was time to take action on this tooth so I agreed. The procedure went in two steps. The first was to remove the old filling, prepare what was left of the tooth for a crown, take an impression for the permanent crown, and put a temporary crown in place. That step was slightly painful, about as much as having a normal filling. The dentist and his assistant worked around my bad gag reflex and worked about as quickly as I've ever seen.

The second step (which should be the easier and quicker of the two but wasn't for my last crown) involves removing the temporary, putting the permanent crown in place, and making sure it feels good. Everything went extremely well. The crown was just a micron or two high in one or two places but the dentist stayed with it until I agreed that it felt comfortable. I've learned from experience that just a small protrusion, like a rock in your shoe, doesn't get better with time.

Unfortunately, within two days the crown (or the tooth under the crown) had become very temperature sensitive. I was told that that wasn't unusual but usually it goes away within a week or so. When it still hadn't gone away after two weeks, I asked for another appointment. This time the dental assistant found a chunk of crown cement that hadn't gotten removed and the dentist decided the crown was still a little too high. With those two things taken care of, I was asked to wait another few days to see if everything would be okay.

So far it appears to be taken care of but after two weeks of additional pain that I didn't bargain for I'm afraid I'll have to say this was a B for Dr. Fife and his crew this time.