What exactly is an unfinished root canal?

Yesterday at eight am I plunked my butt into my dentist's chair for a root canal.  I'd wanted him to pull the small crooked lower tooth, but he convinced me a root canal would be better and not leave a gap.  I didn't care about the gap personally, it being tiny and insignificant in my estimation, but I went with his preference.

After an hour-and-a-half in the chair with him drilling and poking and grinding, he told me we'd finish it up at the next appointment(!?)  He also said I might feel some discomfort, which could be mitigated by Ibuprofen or the like.  I made my next appointment at the front desk, a little worried that it was more than two weeks away, but confident that I could handle a "little discomfort" since the tooth had been providing that for most of a year already.  Well, I'm not sure what he would define as a "little discomfort" but this ain't it.  It hurts like hell every time the Tylenol or Advil wears off (I'm alternating them at a shorter interval than I'd be safely able to take either alone - a method my doctor recommended when I had shingles.)

I'm trying to macho it out until Monday with the help of OTC drugs, but he may be getting a call this weekend.  It kind of reminds me of a mantra we had in IBM, "Don't do any software updates on Friday, unless you want to work over the weekend."  Maybe that holds for unfinished root canals.

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