I am 35 years old, and had my wisdom teeth removed when I was 24. But that's not why I'm posting.
My current problem started roughly 3 or 4 years ago. My upper right 1st molar had a filling in it...the filling broke, and the dentist I used to have drilled it out and put a very large filling in.
Even since that fateful day, I've had problems on and off. For the first 6 months or so, the tooth was tender and my maxillary sinus would hurt. I would have a very low grade fever that would come and go.
Then, I started having this EXCRUTIATING pain in my jaw, in my right maxillary sinus, and down the right front side of throat. The pain would get very bad for 15 minutes, die out for 15 minutes, come back, die out, come back, die out..etc. Each time I would have this pain, I would fight it away with Amoxicillin and lots of mouthwash, and it would go away usually for weeks and then it would just come back again like before.
A couple things I noticed...when flossing, a foul rotting smell would come from the back of my mouth. Also, when my throat was hurting, the lymph nodes of the right side of my neck would be swollen and tender.
The dentist would X-ray me and say there is no abscess. He would tap on the tooth and it wasn't especially painful (only is occasionally tender when I "chomp" down on it). In fact, confusingly, the pain which spread to the jaw/sinus/neck would often be very bad and the tooth might barely hurt, if at all.
Eventually, after a while, the condition seemed to have settled down and it went away for well over a year, maybe almost 2 years, with barely any noticeable pain. Now lately, it is coming back. IT seems to be worsened or trigger by weight lifting, which I recently picked back up in an effort to lose more weight.
Should I just get the stupid tooth pulled, or what? Why does the pain spread when before no abscess was seen? My theory was that food was getting trapped under the filling and between the gum?