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]
I had a guy call me one Saturday night a few years ago, was during the fall I was watchin some football game in my sweat pants.
Anyway, the guy says he has a severe tooth ache and he had gotten drunk and let some of his buddies try to pull it and that they'd just made it worse, would I come in on Saturday night and pull it for him. Said no at first, but he said he make it worth my time, so off I went in my sweats.
I show up and there's 3 guys waiting on the tailgate of their truck, 2 of them drinking beer and 1 of them laying down holding his face. I have at that point a pretty good idea of which dude I'll be working on.
So I get him in the chair, take an xray, sure enough they'd done about as well as you'd think with a pair of channel locks, so I numb him up and off we go. As I'm working on it, i'm using an elevator (thanks Rainman) to loosen the roots up as they'd broken the crown off down to the gumline. I had to cut a trough around it in the bone to get a purchase point to get leverage but that was no biggie.
Anyway, as i'm working my back is to the doorway into the operatory and I can kind of feel someone standing behind me looking over my shoulder. I kind of look up and it's his two buddies whos names escape me, but we'll call Bill and Mike.
They see me using the tool I've got there, which as I said earlier is kind of like a flat head screwdriver with a bent end, and I hear them talking.
Bill says "damn mike tahts where we messed up, next time we pull one of his teeth we have to use a flat head first to loosen it up". I half heartedly laugh, thinking I'll probably see them on the news in the future or something and extract the tooth.
They offer me a Budweiser, we have one in the parking lot and I leave, only to never see them again.
That was the last time I went in on a weekend for a non patient of record. [Reply]
Went in one night about 11 for a guy that called and said he was in severe pain, couldn't sleep and had to have something done. I learned to ask a lot of questions on the phone during this situation.
I get up and throw some clothes on and head to the office. It's about a 25 minute drive to my current office from the house, so I get there and flip everything on, guy comes in and is talking about how he's having so much pain, can't eat etc.
Sit him in the chair, he takes out his denture and says he has this severe soar spot when he eats. I give him that "are you fucking kidding me" look, ask him "so you have a denture sore spot and you couldn't sleep, did you think maybe just to take your denture out"?
"Huh, I didn't even think of that". Wasn't my finest hour.
As I said, I always ask a lot of questions now if it's an emergency. [Reply]
In a weird coincidence, I should note that I just had a dental checkup today. I have no good stories about it, though. They cleaned my teeth and gave me some travel toothpaste when we finished. [Reply]
