Last Sunday, Jon was worried that my tooth extraction procedure the following day was going to hurt.

“It should be easy removing a dead tooth, no?”

“What do you mean by ‘dead tooth’?”

“I had two root canal treatments done to this molar, there should be no nerves in the tooth to feel pain anymore.”

“Really?”

“Erm… I think so?”

I then frantically searched the Web for an answer to “Does it hurt to extract a tooth that has undergone root canal treatment?”

After root canal therapy, the tooth is dead. The patient will no longer feel any pain in that tooth because the nerve tissue has been removed, and the infection has been eliminated.

Medical News Today – Medically reviewed by Christine Frank, DDS on July 26, 2017 — Written by Yvette Brazier

There was sadly no direct answer to my question except countless articles about the differences between root canal treatment and tooth extraction.

So on Monday afternoon, I was nicely tucked for a tooth extraction. The strawberry numbing gel was quite pleasant, but the needle pinches for local anaesthesia were not. The entire procedure lasted for less than 15 minutes.

Doctor Y prompted me to take short breaths as he pulled my tooth – which was good advice – and I did. However, as the teeth rocked back and forth, left and right, yet nowhere out, I suddenly felt this immense shock.

I’m not sure if it was pain or pressure, my heart raced so fast, I felt like I was going to pass out.

Finally, Doctor Y said, “You might hear a crack…”

CRACK!!!

“Doing very well, sweetie. The crown and half the tooth is out!”

In my head, I was processing “hhhuuuuhhhhhh??” but as he started pulling the other half, all I let out was…

Doctor Y gave me another jab of anaesthesia and proceeded with clearing the infection, bone grafting and stitching the extraction site. The only fun bit was getting my tooth back as a little something to document this experience.

Q. Does it hurt to extract a tooth that has undergone root canal treatment?

A. YES! (But it is not the worst part).
Perhaps I should have chosen general anaesthesia instead but I would have missed out on the details.

[To be continued…]