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 DJ's left nut:
You just like to floss shame.
Side note - my dentist got a whizz-bang water scraper thing about 4-5 years ago and asked me if I wanted to use that instead of the metal pick. Oh hell yes, I'll try anything instead of that damn metal pick.
I love it; high pitched whir I can ignore well enough and nowhere near as much agony. They get the last few spots they couldn't hit with the metal one but I don't have a screaming headache and bloody mouth anymore.
But now I specifically have to ask them to use it. They don't mention it and my wife doesn't even realize they have it. They do - it exists and they're happy to fire it up if I ask them to. Is there any reason why it seems to have fallen out of favor or do you figure this particular office just had enough patients who didn't like it that it's not at the front of their mind.
I just had that done yesterday. I wasn't particularly a fan of it, though it was better than the ultrasonic thing that sadistic hygienists have tried on me on the past.
I really like the little metal picks. Plain old-fashioned hand cleaning. The personal attention makes me feel like a Roman emperor or something. [Reply]
See how much less god-awful that looks? You just hold it there like a sprayer knocking the spaghetti sauce of a plate instead of jabbing a jagged metal hook into your gums and scraping until your gums bleed.
The difference between that scraper and the things medieval executioners used to disembowel the condemned is size. That's it.
I watched an Oral Surgeon one day take out 4 wisdom teeth, surgically cutting them out, in about 20 minutes total. When patients are sedated, you gotta be moving quickly. [Reply]
Technology in dentistry is definitely advancing at a crazy rate. Digital xrays are a big thing I have and they're so worth it (those little bastard sensors aren't cheap though) just for the speed. Don't have to have a dark room, uploads right to the screen.
Digital impression taking for crown and bridge is really interesting. In office milling machines and cad cam tech is taking off, but damn, it's hard for me to justify the price of those damn things. I have a scanner, but I dont' mill my own stuff. Just send it to the lab and let them do it.
With the advancements in 3d printing, things are just taking off. I'll see if I can find some cool videos to show some stuff on it. [Reply]
One of my close buddies from dental school is an oral surgeon now, after another 6 years of school post dental school and a residency (fuck that, no way). Some of the stuff he sends us even makes me a bit queasy. For the most part it's implants and wisdom teeth extractions, but he does some stuff at the hospital with cancer docs and reconstruction stuff and it's wild. [Reply]
Originally Posted by O.city:
It's just part of the routine. Honestly.
I say the same 3 or 4 conversation starters to every patient. Then we talk about something else to pass a few seconds, then I check them out then off we go.
True story about my last visit a few weeks ago -
I'm in the chair and the hygenist is about to get to work. She introduces herself and then starts the small talk. Her opener was "Did you hear about that school shooting in California yesterday?"
She didn't just do a casual mention of it either, her idea for conversation was to discuss the whole event in detail.
I casually asked to schedule my next appt with a different one when I left :-) [Reply]
