HOUSTON – A woman who says she had a root canal by a woman posing as a dentist described the process which left her in pain.
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According to court documents, Angelica Vivas, 41, is accused of posing as a licensed dentist and performing a root canal on a patient in February 2024.
“I feel happy and sad at the same time, but happy because I know that the harm she did to me will no longer be done to anyone else. And sad, because all this shouldn’t have happened,” the woman who did not want to be identified told KPRC 2 in Spanish.
Vivas reportedly lied to the patient, claiming to be a qualified dentist. The patient experienced severe pain as a result of the procedure.
The patient told KPRC 2′s Corley Peel that Vivas took out two of her molars trying to get to the tooth that needed a root canal, but couldn’t. According to the patient, Vivas told her there was nothing more she could do, sent her home with some pain meds and told her the root would come out on its own. She paid $800 cash for the root canal and another $300 cash for the molars.
“When I left the clinic my head started to hurt a lot and my jaw started to hurt a lot, my ear, she only gave me medicine for pain,” the woman said. “I went to another dentist and he told me that they had broken my bone and left me with the root.”
The woman said Vivas didn’t tell her about everything wrong because she “didn’t want to freak her out.”
“When I went to the other dentist, I had to pay almost $20,000 to restore all the damage to my mouth,” she said.
Since then, the woman says she underwent surgery to fix the damage, but can’t feel the left side of her face.
She said this experience has taught her to do her research more before having a procedure like this done.
“It’s better to pay a little more than to have all those kinds of consequences, because there’s health, but there’s also your life,” she said.