Literally a Nightmare of Pain Due Exclusively to This Provider Who Won’t Fix the Damage He Created!

I had my first ever root canal on my #2 tooth and ended up with a gargantuan crown done by Dr. Miller. It was bulky and way too big from the beginning, but I decided to go along to get along because it was in the back and already glued in permanently before I realized the problem. It would bother me periodically and he would sand it down and it would bother me and he would sand it down, etc.

He’s such a great dentist that (sarcasm) I needed another root canal and another crown a year later. This crown was more freakishly gargantuan than the first, but unlike the first, this one was on the #5 tooth and visible to anyone who would talk to me.

After a ton of pain and gouging into my cheek creating a perpetually sore spot, the dentist sanded the Godzilla of a crown down. Fast forward, I was having the same problem and came back. He sanded it down again with the admonition that it couldn’t be made any thinner. I was still having the pain from the large size of the crown and having a nightmare of a food trap from the significant margin he had created with such an ill fit that existed between the top of my crown and the bottom of my gum line.

I go back in pain and with a horrible taste in the crown, and he agrees to make an appointment to take it off later and cast a mold for a new crown. He tells me that it is super easy to get the crown off, you just drill a little line in it and BOOM it pops off.

When my appointment to get it taken off comes around 2 weeks later (still in pain the whole time), it is again a nightmare. The crown does not come off easily, or even with some difficulty, but rather with blood, sweat and tears as only shattered shards are left of my $1200 crown. A temporary is made around 2 hours (!!) later and I leave, to wait for my permanent crown to come in.

Crown comes in and is still comparatively bulky to the surrounding teeth, but now it at least visually blends (except from the backside) and doesn’t cause the constant cheek sores. Taking off the temporary also caused an absolutely sickening odor to come forth, apparently because it had been sealed poorly or not at all, and that smell was a representation of over a fortnight of collected food and bacteria.

At the same time, I had just had my second rotator cuff surgery just in 2017 alone, so pain was kind of relative in terms of dental work, but I again complained about the bulkiness of the original crown (tooth #2) and again Dr. Miller made adjustments. I assumed the chronic sores in my cheek would go away after the space was filled by an appropriate crown on #5, but the inflammation just kind of spread out and never healed or went away no matter how much I tried. During an annual physical, my primary care doctor noticed the painful sores in my cheek and asked me what they were about. I explained the dental situation and he checked his notes to confirm that I’d been having the same mouth issue this time last year, although a larger area seemed to have developed and I picked up a sizable white line in my cheek from where I was accidentally biting down on it so often from the ill fitting crown (#2). My primary care provider urged me to get the dental work resolved, not only for my comfort, but pointed out the obvious : that I just can’t have a huge sore in my mouth that never heals, those sores can turn into a pre-cancer situation, and that’s undesirable. CANCER?!

So the #2 crown continues to bulge into my cheek, aggravating my massive sore. My bite had become so maladjusted that I started biting accidentally both the cheek with the crown, and the cheek on the OTHER side. Peers point out to me the weird faces I keep making as I contort my mouth to the position where the crown puts the least pressure gouging into my cheek. The pain and domino effect of problems become so intolerable that I call the office begging for help first thing on a Monday morning. They agree to see me just to look at the situation, not fix it, but inspect it — NEXT Monday at 4.30pm.

So I’m to be in more pain for over a week for something that is entirely created 100% by the poor fit of the crown he put in to begin with???? A week? I try to put forth a stiff upper lip and deal with it, meanwhile it’s just a cycle of this bleeding flamimg sore that is in constant pain and renders eating painful and life miserable. Also, because the crown is so freakishly large and bulges out, a shelf is created where food traps on the gum line in the back every time I eat, and really the only way to get it out is to put my finger back there, over the shelf, and push out the food myself. Disgusting and unhygienic.

Wednesday, in absolute misery, I call again to beg for mercy and help sooner than next Monday evening. Surprise, my phone call goes direct to voicemail. I leave a voicemail explaining the situation and the wait time that I find to be unacceptable, and end with a plea for help. I get a call the next morning and the dentist gruffly agrees to see me at 3.50pm Thursday, but I’d have to get there and wait a while. Well then why tell me a precise time if it’s meaningless? So I wait an hour while being treated as a pariah in the office and I’m then seen. Dr. Miller sands the crown down again for the umpteenth time and I honestly notice no difference in either the bulky size or the food trap shelf in the back. After expressing my concern and explaining how far the crown sticks out in all directions past where it should, past where the natural tooth DID (or were the identical tooth on the opposite side DOES), he affirms that he won’t do anything else past what he did and refuses to fix it with a proper fitting crown, instead saying that the existing crown was the perfect size for my space. He offered to have me come back Monday and he’d take the crown off but wouldn’t replace it (so I’d just have the crown off, with my fragile root-canalled natural tooth exposed to the elements). He prescribed me peridex for the intolerable mouth sores, and inflamed gums and I’m none too pleased to hear that the side effect is it stains my teeth. So you put in a freakishly large crown, it causes mouth sores and messes up my bite, completely owing to its size. The sores won’t heal, are very painful, and my doctor is talking pre-cancer. And you won’t fix your own awful work. And the only thing you give me to help me will stain my teeth. At this point, Dr. Miller finds that another patient in another room is more important than am I, and leaves me abruptly when he decided the conversation was over. I left upset and in tears.

I had paid full-blown retail for 2 crowns which both had the same problem : so abnormally large as to cause a wave of secondary problems. Once the crowns were paid for, the doctor was not at all interested in helping me through the after-effects of their shoddy work. Why?? I had paid fair value for a crown that fits in my mouth and had received it neither time. I had never had a crown before in my life, and thought the first one was an outlier, but the second one was clearly a pattern. The doctor did fix the more egregious of the two crowns, but left to the ravages of time, the less egregious one had become the most. I can’t afford to buy a new crown to replace the one that is still ill-fitting and hurting the surrounding cheek and gum tissue. I’m in so much pain and see no alternatives that I can do right now.

So I do believe in the value of restorative dentistry, but both crowns I’ve had done by Dr. Miller have been a pricey, agonizing hell on earth.

And what resources have I to get a resolution? Either a replacement to actually fit my mouth which is what I paid for, or my money back so that I can get a competent dentist to correct it. It’s not just that he gets to walk away with the price I paid and I walk away in worse shape than I was, after I tried to make it work for so so long. It’s not right to be put on the doctor’s pay no mind list and treated like a pariah after the service is paid in full.