Hurting Gum On Side of Mouth After Missing Tooth When Chewing

Yesterday I was out to lunch and was eating chips and salsa and ended up biting down on a small piece of chip that hurt my gum. Let me explain what happened. As I was chewing a piece of chip aligned itself so it was vertical in my mouth. As my top molar came down to chew the piece of chip the chip was not on a lower molar to receive the brunt of the chew, but rather it was right at my gumline. All of this happened so fas that I didn't know what was going on until I had a shooting pain in the side of my mouth. At first I thought that a piece of nacho had actually been inserted into my gum between my tooth and gum, but I went to the dentist and he cleaned it out and said nothing was in there. Now a day later the pain is worse. The pain is not at the gumline but deeper, almost like when I bit down on the chip I cit so hard that it damaged an underlying nerve. I looked inside my mouth and I don't think there is a foreign object under the gum, so I think the only answer is a damged nerve. Has anybody ever heard of this or experienced this painful situation?