I got an appointment to go back to the dentist next week. Unfortunately it's not to actually take care of the problem -- it's for an evaluation and bite adjustment. In other words, he's going to tinker with the filling and see if that solves it. Possibly prod me with some cold objects and whack the tooth with a hard object to check for sensitivity and pain. I've been through this once before before the filling was put in, and the specific diagnosis was "The pain isn't a good sign, but you have no pressure sensitivity and not much to cold. Let's fill it and see what happen." Well, what happened is the pain not going away.

(Of course, I'm clearly just freaking out about all this, and somehow the tooth will magically heal and stop hurting because 'I haven't let it heal' from the fillings.)

The bitch is that to go into the dentist, I have to take the day off work. Even if I'm only there for fifteen minutes -- I can't get IN if I go in the morning, and if the appointment is in the afternoon, getting back takes me so long I'd be clocking out the same time as I'm clocking in. But I've been burning sick time like crazy to deal with this, so I don't have much left.

So I get to spend the next five days in pain, then go in to get nothing effective done (burning time at work), spend however many days is necessary to convince people that the bite adjustment didn't work, then go back in for the root canal.

Or alternatively, I can just pretend it's fine until it becomes a crisis, and find some way to keep the pain from distracting me from everything (as it's doing now).