As an update to The root canal Factory, the tooth felt much better after the temp filling and no air, food, water, etc was hitting the nerve directly. But later that night - OH LORD!! The pain was so intense I almost thought the dentist put some kind of irritant in the cavety just to make sure his prognosis was self fulfilling.

I also felt a bit sheepish for writing my long story and then probably needing a root canal (in a big way) anyway. But I was reading that a root canal is mainly a remedy for a tooth that is infected near the root. It seems intuitively like the first course of action would be to try to disinfect the tooth. Of course the dentist when he capped the tooth barely cleaned it out let alone treated it with Antibiotics .

So I figured I'd try holding out a bit longer and seeing if treating the gums with Colloidal Silver and doing some high content Oregano pulls could at least calm down the infection and pain. What did I have to lose? The best solution the dentist could offer was to kill the tooth anyway.

Still, the next day the pain didn't subside and I couldn't get anything done at all I was in so much pain. So I decided that night I'd do some heavy EFT tapping (couldn't believe I hadn't thought of that before), some gum scorching oregano pulls, and if that didn't do it - I'd go to another dentist in the morning and follow their recommendation. That night the EFT was surprisingly effective, taking the pain from a debilitating 10, to a more livable strong ache in the 6-7 range. After, I did a big oregano (and flax oil) pull that also seemed to help a bit.

I actually slept through the night and then somehow woke up completely pain free! At most I could rouse a low level ache after prodding around the tooth that would have made me nauseous with pain the day before. And I'm now on my 2nd day and still completely pain free.

My guess is that if they took the xray again, they wouldn't see the huge inflamed mass that was at the root. Because I'm certain the infection is completely or almost completely gone. I suppose they'd recommend destroying the tooth anyway "just to be safe" ($1000 safe), but I'm going to keep on with my 2 pulls a day and see if we can't get away with just a new filling in a few weeks.

There's a procedure called "capping" that can be done if the nerve hasn't been too compromised. Since this is a less costly sustitute for a root canal that's more concerned with saving the tooth than making money, they'll have to be somewhat ethical to offer it in the first place.

I'm not sure what the final outcome will be, but I know I wouldn't have any options at all if it weren't for OP. And right now I'm betting that I'll be able to do without the root canal altogether. I'll follow up later if anyone's interested.