I have been experiencing some pain over the past few months. I assumed it was either one of my wisdom teeth coming in or a cavity on one of my other wisdom teeth. So I just have lived with it by taking 2-3 aleve everyday over the past few months until the extraction happened. I would wake up in the middle of the night with a severe pain if the medicine wore off.

Well, now that my wisdom teeth are out I am still experiencing pain...not as intense but still needing about 1 aleve. Asked my dentist at my last cleaning about it and he said that my root canal I had done about 4 years ago looks "suspicious" and referred me to a root-canal specialist to have a look at it.

I told him that I have cold sensitivity associated with the pain and he said that since the tooth was dead it couldn't feel the cold so that wouldn't be related. He didn't see any decay anywhere else where the pain could be coming from.

Anyway, I am heading to the specialist this upcoming Friday...my question is how do Root Canals "go bad"? And could I, in fact, have pain from the root canal w/ cold water?

You can get an abscess if the root wasn't completely cleaned out and filled, which happens in a small percentage of root canals. They can usually open up the tooth again and do a retreatment and hopefully that will take care of it. If you are going to a specialist, they will most likely recommend the retreatment. However, it doesn't always work and then you could have an apicoectomy or get the tooth pulled.