Life Dental experiences with O.City - Page 11

Had a pretty interesting day today at the office. Morning was pretty normal, drill and fill, check hygiene, extract a tooth etc. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Pretty normal lunch. Trolled around on CP, ate an apple and a handful of wheat thins.

Then the afternoon hit.

I see inmates from the county jail here in town if they have a tooth ache or something, sheriff or deputy will call up and bring them up in shackles and the whole bit. It's not big deal, most of them are just happy to get out of pain and it's not a problem. So dude comes in, my assistant goes in to ask the normal "which tooth is bothering you, let me get an xray, blah blah". I was in the lab doing something so I wasn't really paying attention. She comes in and says "doc, you will need to come look at something" to which I responded "he need a tooth out, which tooth is hurting"?

"All of them". Huh, ok, weird response but lets go check it out. Sure enough, continued meth use pretty much causes things to not go so well intraorally, so he was pretty much decayed out and most teeth were broken off to the gumline (google meth mouth if you want to see it, i'm not messing with photos). Asked if I could extract all 26 teeth he had left in the 30 minute block we had on the schedule for him.

I laughed, said "nah, which one hurts the worst, we'll take that out". He pointed to one, I numbed it up, used an elevator to take it out, about 30 seconds worth of pressure and it was pretty lose. 2 teeth next to it are super mobile and infected (which starts draining as I get this one out, that smelt nice) so I told him he was getting 2 free extractions since he was already numb in that area and they were loose and I was right there, no harm no foul.

It's always fun when we see the inmates, the Sheriff comes up and sits in the room with them all serious, then when I come in the room we talk about hunting or why the Chiefs always break hearts or something.

He breaks down and starts crying thanking me, that he already felt better (if you saw the amount of infection I drained, you'd see why) and asked if he could make an appointment for when he got out. "Sure, how long you think you'll be in this predicament".

"I figure 4 or 5 years, you scheduling ahead that far yet"? Told him nah, just take care of himself and come see me when he gets out.

Next patient is an amish guy (we have a fairly big amish community near us), super nice guy, needs a crown. Asks if he can barter instead of pay, I ask what is in it for me, said he'd bring me a dozen eggs every week for 6 months (they have chicken barns or something) or I could have a quarter of one of the cows they're butchering. Sold, eggs and beef for a crown, sign me up.

Only problem with that is he scheduled an appointment for himself, but brought 4 other family members who all needed work done.

So we had a waiting room full of inmates and Amish this afternoon. Thought that might be a good name of a band or something.
[Reply]

Originally Posted by O.city:
Nah, I don’t usually ever even know what they did anyway. Don’t really care, not my job to judge them. I’m there to help with their tooth ache. Nothing more.

I do have a few PIA patients (I’ll let you figure that one out) that when I see their name on the schedule I kinda cringe but that’s pretty normal.

I get people had bad experiences and the dentist isn’t the funnest place to be. But it’s hard as shit to hit a moving target with a spinning drill so try to sit still

I hear the sweet young ladies who clean my teeth, when they see my name on the list, put their sexy undies on and wear their plunging neckline shirts.
[Reply]

Originally Posted by O.city:
Injections are the thing that most people hate understandably

Funny story on how we actually learned how to do those. We had the class of course did actually taught by a retired oral surgeon. Really great surgeon and teacher. Anesthesiology 1 or whatever

Then towards the end of the semester we have a Saturday booked up in the oral surgery clinic upstairs at the dental school where all the oral surgery residents are there and we dental students have to partner up. You give your partner the 10 main injections under supervision then switch places and get it done on you.

Stick and squirt is what they called it. I’d had a lot of dental work done as a kid so it did t bother me. A lot of people were kids of dentists or whatever so they’d always had perfect teeth and never a cavity or any issue so they freaked out.

One guy was doing a block on this chick and he went to lateral and the needle comes out the side of her cheek and we can see anesthetic squirting out. Two people pass out.

So we give each other two carps of lidocaine to do the injections. Everyone is numb everywhere

Then we head to the bar up the street for drink and drool

^ this is awesome.
[Reply]

Originally Posted by O.city:
Light complexion people with red hair always have trouble with anesthesia. It’s kinda folk lore and I’m not sure there’s actual literature there but they always have it in my office

Of course my father in law (who posts here hope he doesn’t read this lol) is that way and I have to work on him. He always bitches at me he needs more anesthetic. I’m pretty sure he’s just a baby

And yeah the gas helps. It’s more just turns your give a damn down it doesn’t do anything for anesthesia

I kind of fit that description. I don't usually have trouble with anesthetics, but the last time I got a filling I had a new dentist, and she had to give me something like five shots. After the fourth one, I was thinking, "Are you trying to save money on anesthesia or something?" The first three shots had zero impact at all on me. It was odd.
[Reply]