I know that a sensitive tooth can be a real pain to deal with, no pun intended. Getting a crown placed requires a lot of steps that can irritate the tooth...water spray, air spray, sculpting down the tooth....all for a good reason, which is to protect and restore your tooth. These things can irritate the nerve of the tooth and it can take time for sensitivity to subside. A dentist can check all of the directions your teeth can slide and hit together. One tiny interference from a sideways motion can cause this sensitivity. Sometimes these interferences are difficult to replicate. If the crown is adjusted and the interference is removed, it can take about 1-2 weeks for the symptoms to fully resolve. If it is root surface exposure causing the sensitivity, you can get MI Paste from a dental office which has minerals to help stop your symptoms and protect the tooth.
A single crown on a front tooth can be one of the most difficult things to match in dentistry. Adding to the difficulty is your teeth are not all one color and not all perfectly straight, like you mentioned. The crown has to be a certain thickness, which may be the reason it protrudes further out than your other front tooth. The dentist that did this crown would know if it is possible to "thin it out" a little bit. One thing that it sounds like you are noticing is that it does not reflect light in the same way your natural teeth are doing. There are different types of crowns and some reflect light better than others. Some materials are more translucent than others. Sometimes a dentist has to work very closely with a lab to do custom shading and layering of ceramic to make it look as natural as possible. However, sometimes a stronger, harder material has to be used if a patient has a strong bite or grinds their teeth. When that is the case, the crown can sometimes turn out to look more opaque. There are dentists that will communicate with a dental lab to make a crown be as esthetically pleasing and natural looking as possible.
Creating a suction movement with your tongue is not likely to harm the crowns in any way. When the crowns were placed, they were permanently bonded with cement. I am glad you like the fit of your new crowns! That is great. It sounds like you are getting adjusted to having these crowns in your mouth, which can take some time because the texture and shape are different than what was in your mouth before. Within a week or two, you should be used to them.
It is not unusual to have to adjust teeth that are biting onto a crown to make sure you are biting in the best way possible. A broken tooth that needs a crown may have broken because the teeth hitting it were causing trauma to that tooth. If you don't adjust the opposing tooth causing the trauma, it will wear down the crown faster than necessary. I know you don't want a dentist to adjust a tooth that seems perfectly good to you, but the adjustment is usually a tenth of a millimeter, which is not enough to harm your tooth. Sometimes the good tooth has a really sharp cusp tip and barely polishing it to a rounder shape can help the crown last longer. There are a myriad of reasons that adjusting your good tooth would be beneficial. I hope that these examples help.
When you get bone grafting, it is normal for the dentist placing the bone graft to overfill the site with the granules with the expectation that some will come out. I usually tell my patients not to worry if they feel some of the grains come out because I overstuff it to make sure that it takes. I would not worry. Best of luck! Lauren Lee, DMD
