Irresponsive to pain killers? Most people take the wrong pain killers for tooth related pain. For tooth related pain, you need to take anti-inflammatory medicine. Normal paracetamol or codeine won't do the trick. Cold water won't always help, since the tooth can become sensitive to ALL temprature stimuli. Clove oil will only help for short periods of time, and applying too much, too often can damage the tooth and surrounding tissues.
Yes, I already knew that. In fact, in my country we even have a specific nsaid that everyone knows to be even much more effective than ibuprofen or Diclofenac or other commonly used nsaids for tooth pain specifically, which is clonixin (yet it seems to not be available in most other countries). It's very common in my country, from stories of other people that I've heard at least, for even the max dose of ibuprofen not doing much for tooth pain (like a hot tooth) and this drug working (even though it's just a non-selective nsaid like ibuprofen, who knows why). The same even happened to me, in the only time I had a hot tooth, 600mg of ibuprofen didn't do anything, while 300mg of clonixin worked quite well.
But I've even heard of many cases of not even this drug working, and not even going to the hospital get injections either. The cold water and clove oil have a more direct action, so I think they're more likely to work. At least I myself never heard of a case of cold water not working (even though yes, many times these teeth are also sensitive to cold, but well cold water always seems to work regardless).
But this is all for a hot tooth, i.e. the typical irreversible pulpitis caused by cavities reaching the pulp and infecting it. The other cause that I talked about (wonky nerve from extensive fillings) seems much more less prevalent or at least discussed, so I'm not sure the cold water often works (because like I said the cause of pain is different). And I'm even less sure about the clove oil, which again is also a miracle painkiller for a hot tooth, because soaking a small cotton in it and putting the cotton for one minute in the infection-causing cavity (yes, very carefully to not touch the gums or necrosis can occur) will make the clove oil completely anesthesize the nerve (that's how the Red Cross toothache kits work). But in the "wonky nerve" irreversible pulpitis there's no cavity in the tooth from where the clove oil to seep through into the nerve, so I'm not sure it would help.
sorry for talking so much, but this has been making me really stressed because I've had like 4 cases of these "wonky nerve" teeth in the past 6-12 months and have 2 new teeth that are still cold sensitive from previous bad fillings despite the fillings having been re-done a month ago. Fortunately I've managed to get all those 4 teeth root canal treatment before the pain got bad, but I'm in constant fear I won't be able to some day (like with these 2 new ones where I'm still unsure, or they might just get bad overnight), and at least in my experience systemic analgesics quite often fail for severe tooth pain, and the pain can be quite horrible specially if it hits at night and there's no dentists open... even the clonixin still fails a few times.
