So a couple of you might know this but I have a phobia of two things that have the power to absolutely terrify me.
Spiders and Dentists.
The spider phobia comes and goes but is definitely manageable once I reach down between my legs and grab a pair. The dentist one is not even close to manageable. I walk into a dentist office and immediately start having anxiety attacks start building.
So that leads me to my current situation.
About ten years ago I had an issue with one of my teeth. A temporary filling I got when I was in the army finally disintegrated and the tooth had become infected causing me pain. My loving wife found a dentist who would see me that day and agreed to knock me out in order to bypass the anxiety.
When all was said and done the dentist lied to the wife and refused to listen to me, I spent three hours in acute anxiety while the asshole drilled and filed on the tooth in question. I was supposed to go back and have it finalized and capped at a later date. I let the tooth fall apart and disintegrate. Did not cause me an ounce of pain but yeah I am now currently missing a tooth.
Come to present. Wednesday I woke up with a pain in my right lower jaw. Figured I must have bitten my cheek or something and ignored it. By Thursday night it was obvious that a cavity or something had given way to infection and I had another tooth that was causing a problem. I kept my mouth shut, shoved down the aspirin and hoped it would get better.
Friday night by 11 PM I was sitting in the ER of St Joes in an indescribable amount of pain. I have a major infection going on and since I am not dying they are gonna let me just sit there even though it is obvious that I am suffering.
I don’t know what has happen to our health care system but please let me point out that how things were run were absolutely deplorable. There was some kid who had taken a fall and could not lift his head. He either cracked a disk in his neck or broke it. No he was not paralyzed but we are talking the poor kiddo was suffering, could not move his head, had secondary symptoms happening and those shit heads let this kid sit there for two hours before they even took him back to examine him. There were people who had been sitting there for two – four hours waiting to be seen that were finally giving up and leaving. Honestly I think that was the idea: make them wait long enough and they will just leave.
I stuck in there and at 2 AM I am finally escorted back to be “examined”. The poor triage nurse became really upset when I started ripping into him because 1) He started to triage me for the third time that night 2) He was talking about me having to continue to wait 3) Any and all attempts on my part to manage the pain had worn off and I was in 100% pure agony.
The doctor must have heard me ripping on this guy because suddenly she appear and said she would take care of things and he could leave. She asked a couple of questions to try to figure out if I was a druggy looking for a fix and then examine my tooth which could not be seen through the swelling. I was in tears by this time but still struggling from breaking down completely from the waves of pain crashing through my head.
She disappeared for about ten minutes and came back with a shot. Grabbing one of the interns that had been sitting around all night doing nothing she had the young lady hold a light so she could see where the stick the needle. In goes the needle, anxiety is being over ridden by the desperate need for relief, the burning pain of the medication being pushed into the nerve and within moments blessed relief creeping across my jaw.
The relief was so intense that I literally broke down sobbing.
The doctor prescribed penicillin for the infection, motrin for pain management and anti-inflammatory and percocet for more intense pain management. I am to take all three until the infection is kicked down then continue with the motrin and penicillin until I run the course of the prescription. By that time I need to have an appointment set up with a dentist to figure out how to fix my mouth so I don’t have a repeat session.
In my drug induce haze I don’t care right now. I will face my phobia when I need to…… course we all know once the heavy duty pain meds wear off I will do what I can to avoid entering that white office with the fake smiles that make me want to crawl under the nearest table curling into a ball of pure terrorize wussy.
Anyone know of a dentist who is willing to actually listen to the patient and knock said patient out?
Hey, Chaz, there’s a Dr. Larry Wheeler that is advertised on the radio that has sedation denistry. Interested?? 745-0030.