Bash dentistry thread - post your gory stories right here.

[Mika]

Let's hear your gory stories.

And, of course, how many boats and Mercedes you've "bought" for your dentist(s).

Go for it.

:evilgrin:

[GiovanniC]

1. I Once Woke Up From Anesthesia During Oral Surgery

Coughed blood on the dentist. Didn't mean to. They put me back under and it took several hours longer than they anticipated for me to regain consciousness.


++++ BONUS ASIDE ++++

That new Father of the Pride show on NBC had a great little joke about a situation being as uncomfortable as waking up in your dentist chair to find him buckling his pants.

[Mika]

2. Cool

:hi:

I love a good spitting blood story. ;)

Everyone has a unique tolerance to anesthetics.

-


Sans-a-belt are the choice of 4 out of 5 dentists. }(

[Liberal Veteran]

3. While my dentist was in the other dental room and my novacaine was...

....was doing it's thing, I reached down to pick up a magazine and there was a tooth that had slipped just under the cabinet.

When the dental assistant came in I was like "Psst....Is that a....tooth right there?"

It was.

Ewwww.

[Mika]

4. That's what we do with extracted teeth

Just chuck them on the floor. Handy. Maybe some will fit the next victims.. er.. patients.

:evilgrin:

[barackmyworld]

5. I couldn't stop bleeding after I had two teeth removed

when I was 15 or 16. For some reason, my mother insisted that we go to Target instead of going straight home from the dentist, and I had bled and drooled through all my paper towels. So, I held a plastic bag over my face and drooled into it. God bless being unable to control the release of fluid from your own mouth.

[Mika]

6. Target would make most people's sockets bleed

Its a normal response. ;)

:hi:

[BiggJawn]

7. The guy I'd been seeing has 6 rooms going at once.

He runs in, looks at the Xray, looks in your mouth, then tells his Dental Assistant what to do.

Then off to the next room......

None of "his" work is very good quality. One restoration (resin) is too big and looks like a wad of spackle on my bicuspid and the rest of them broke and fell out within 2 years.

And the partial he charged me $600 for has never fit right and rubs my gums raw. I thought those things were supposed to have a soft liner or something in them?

I used to get better work done at IU dental school.

Oh, I had a molar out once (at IU), and forgot to tell 'em I'd been poppin' aspirins like tic-tacs for 3 days...Started bledding in the middle of the night, and woke up in a bed that looked like somebody had either been deflowered by Jeff Stryker or had their throat cut. Blood EVERYWHERE! Even on the walls and ceiling!

[Mika]

8. Sounds like a dental mill

:hi:

HMO dentists have signed contracts with the insurers to see as many as 20-30 patients a day.

Some dentists have signed on with several HMO's.

In many of those practices people have been reduced to numbers and forms.


F-ing mill work.


May I suggest that you look for another dentist.

[BiggJawn]

13. You may.

And I will. Thanks!
Saddest thing was,I don't have insurance, so I was paying 100% OOP with this guy.


BTW, we recently had "Delta Dental" offered to us as a dental plan. I've had very bad experiences with Compdent providers, I wonder if you have any insight on what kind of Dentist would be a Delta provider?

[Mika]

18. You are an HMO dentists dream

They can fit you in at full price while they mill out their HMO patients at the same time.

Pure gold.

If you paid in full, you would be better off with a non HMO dentist. They take more time and care as well as use a higher quality dental lab, as a general rule of thumb.

HMO/insurance cases are financially forced to use the cheapest dental labs (usually outsourced to Korea, Phillipines, or China), so, much of their full price work might be done with these same low quality labs (wtf does the patient know :shrug: ).




"What kind of Dentist would be a Delta provider?"


A busy one.



'Nuff said.




:hi:

[BiggJawn]

35. How do you tell the diference between HMO and non-HMO?

They don't have signs on the door saying "I'm not a HMO Filling Mill", do they?

I may be forced back into the HMO, though. "Reasonable and Customary" for what I need done around here is about $700/tooth for the endo/post/core work and another $700 for the crown. And I need at LEAST 3 of them. Those are just the broken teeth. Not sure what else is falling apart in there.

[Mika]

36. Ask what HMO plans do they cover.

The fees you posted are very reasonable (for my area - Miami).

Dental plans have dds's strapped so tight that their profit is gained by sheer volume, cheap materials, and dirt cheap offshore outsourced (not very good) lab work. Its simply killing high quality dentistry. Dental plan DDS's, generally speaking, get in the habit of doing things "quick and dirty", even to their full price cash patients.

"You get what you pay for" has never been so applicable, as I have seen in modern dentistry.

Its a damn shame. We need another dental health model in the US.

[BiggJawn]

39. Thanks for your information.

So I could assume that the less HMO's a dentist belongs to, the higher the chances that he/she doesn't cut corners to keep the margin up?

I know the fees are very "reasonable". $30,000 is a good price for a Cessna 150, but I can't afford that, either.

There's a reason poor people have such nasty teeth. It's not that we don't care, it's that w/o some kind of insurance, we can't afford to do anything other than have the really painful ones pulled.

"Dental plan DDS's, generally speaking, get in the habit of doing things "quick and dirty", even to their full price cash patients."

You hit the nail on the head. don't suppose it'd do any good to grab his sleeve and say "Wait a minute. *I'M* paying for this, not Cigna. YOU get back in here and do the work, not your Tech..."

[Mika]

40. BiggJawn..

$30,000 is a reasonable price for a quality full mouth restoration w/porcelain caps and veneers.

Your teeth for life are worth more than a nice car, aren't they?

It takes much more work and skill to treat a broken down mouth than robots making a new car.


Try to find a dds who repudiates HMO/DMO plans. Most will work out zero interest payment plans w/their patients. Many dds's see the patient who uses insurance plans as a patient who prefers giving their money to a profiteering middle man (company) instead of directly paying for their work to the people who actually do the work. Removing incentive for high end dentistry is surely no way to improve and invest in quality dental care. Its a two way street. The more people rely on lowest bidder dental plans the less reasonable priced high quality dentistry will be available. Its the insurance industry (and the persons who espouse them) who are destroying affordable high-end care.

If the insurance co's have their way it will mean a destruction of another US based manufacturing industry - quality dental labs in the US (most US dental labs are high-end manufacturers that require huge investment in training and high tech materials and machines).

Best long term plan - pay as you go, take care of your teeth holistically.

[BiggJawn]

44. Payment plan?

I was not aware that dentists would do such a thing. OK, so maybe I thought they might. actually, I was planning on going to the credit union to see if they'd float me a loan for an overhaul, or ask the Doctor who handles his financing.

I'm not disputing the value of a mouth full of trouble-free teeth, I've just not been able to afford anything other than having them pulled, one-by-one....

Payment plan.....Hey, thanks again for that info! I never immagined.

goes w/o saying that I shouldn't do that with the "mill-owner" I've been seeing, right? :-)

[Dude_CalmDown]

9. Laughing Gas

I was sucking down the laughing gas (nitrous) for at least a half hour to 45 minutes before I got knocked out because some heart monitoring machine was at another office and someone was driving it over (and stuck in traffic). I had such a great time I can't believe it. Not only was I higher than a kite (thank the nice nurse for turning that precious knob on the machine every time I requested it) but the dentist had a hysterical last name (although I cannot remember it now) and me and the nurses spent most of the time just ripping on the Dentist laughing our asses off. It was great.

[Mika]

10. Yikes

"me and the nurses spent most of the time just ripping on the Dentist laughing our asses off."


You and the staff ripped on the dentist about to work on you, and you sat there for treatment? :wow:

Hmmmm.

[Dude_CalmDown]

15. Yeah but I wasn't exactly in the right state of mind.

Luckily the doc was a good guy because if I were him I would have been tempted to get a little revenge.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

11. Um okay

I had a tooth that needed a root canal for the LONGEST time. I couldn't afford it (was in college). Went to Virginia Beach to visit new in-laws and my tooth flared up so badly in the middle of the night I could see stars. My husband was military at the time and father in law was retired military so they took me to the Naval base there at 2 am. The dentist on call had to come in and when he got there he started slamming things around, REALLY pissed off that he had to come in.

When he saw me, he said, "DEPENDENT?" And I said, "yes." That's the last thing he said for a while. He continued slamming and throwing everything around and started on my tooth.

I was so scared and so much in pain I was trembling all over, I mean like I was having a grand mal.

Both myself AND the dentist forgot all about pain killer until he started in on my tooth. I came out of the chair. He realized what happened, too, then yelled at me. Called me "stupid girl" (I was 21 at the time). Ordered me back in the chair.

I was crying. Got back in the chair and he gave me lidocaine. Started in. He was NOT gentle in the least, very rough constantly and after a while, started muttering and cussing under his breath.

Lidocaine wears off pretty quickly for me and it did then, too. I started thrashing around and he told me to "settle down" then injected some more.

Two hours of torture. He put in a temporary filling and sent me on my way.

The only good part was my father in law bought me a huge bouquet of flowers the next day.

It was horrible. I have other stories, but I'll end this here.

[Mika]

14. I'm sorry that happened to you

Its a great horror story. Sorry to hear it.

But, in defense of the dentist.. how many times do you think that dentists have come in (in the middle of the night) to treat long standing and untreated problems. Dentists do prefer to treat emergencies during waking hours - as you could have done at some time prior. Still, it does not excuse the dentist for mistreating you, even if it was 2 hours of hell (for both parties) in the middle of the night. His pay scale probably had something to do with it (as well as the fact that you were not a regular patient).


Everyone has had a bad day (or middle of the night 2 hours of hell) at some time.

:hi:

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

16. It was a naval hospital

which means he'd have to treat any dependent or active duty who walked in.

And of course I wasn't a regular! I didn't even live there! Military dentists very rarely have "regulars" anyway.

Middle of the night or not, when you are on call and someone has a dental emergency, you don't act like you got your license by sending in cereal box tops and yelling at the patient, too. I'd be willing to bet $1000 my hell was far far worse than his.

I was scared shitless to let him continue, he was that bad, but even more scared of walking out of there with no root canal. I was a full-time college student whose husband brought home $700 a month. I had needed that tooth fixed for six years, since I was in high school, and my parents could have afforded it, but had other things to do with their money.

As far as his pay scale goes, again, he was a navy dentist. He was getting paid no matter what.

[peekaloo]

12. Mmmmmmm cherry scented nitrous.........

does not smell like cherries when you puke in the dentist's tray. }(

I was having my teeth capped and just as the dentist was beginning I heard, not felt, the drill grind to a halt and saw a wisp of smoke emerge from my mouth. The horrified look on both the dentist's face and his assistant made me burst out laughing. It's difficult to say "Did you fuck up?" with a rubber tongue but I managed it.

I figured we were even when I had to stop the procedure to tell him the N.O. was making me nauseous. Must have happened before because his assistant held a spit tray under my chin moments before I recycled my breakfast. :-(

p.s. He had a really sweet Candy Apple red Mercedes convertible parked out back.

[Khephra]

17. All I'll say is this

Never be the last patient on the Friday of a holiday weekend at a budget dentist...especially if you're getting multiple teeth pulled.

It was like swab, needle, needle, needle, pull, pull, pull--all in the space of about 30 seconds. I could barely walk out of the place and I was crying like a baby.

Oh yeah, one other time I had a panic attack during a cleaning and almost had a heart attack. They had to call an ambulance for me.

Now you'll understand why I have to have serious drugs to have dental work done.

[Mika]

19. I appoint extractions for the mornings

After instructing the victim.. er.. patient not to eat a big dinner or a breakfast.

I really try to avoid nitrous oxide. Its bad stuff.


A valium the night before, and another in the morning really does work on 99% of high anxiety patients. Of course, a gentle touch and earning the trust of the patient has a lot to do with with the experience.

Next time, consult with your Dr about your anxiety, it is normal and it can be relieved very easily.

Best of luck. :hi:

[Khephra]

20. I finally found a PERFECT dentist

He's expensive though. I guess that's what you have to pay for perfection. Even his assistants are totally cool.

[Mika]

21. I am glad you've found one

They are getting rarer and rarer.

:hi:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

22. I needed a root canal,

I went to a local dentist who was on my sucky insurance plan; and it cost waaay more than I could afford even with insurance. So the dentist's assistant, who'd never done a root canal, agreed to perform the surgery at a reduced rate.
Oh. My. God.
It took three separate sessions, too.
Never again.

[Mika]

29. OMG. That was so fucking illegal - and dangerous.

Did you know that it requires a license (after many years of schooling) to perform dental surgery?

You got punk'd. Bushwhacked.


NEVER go there again.

[Bride of Cthulhu]

23. got a root canal

and the pain killer didn't work at all so they started drilling anyway so there i sat tears running down my face and the dentist told me that dentist don't put people under for root canals anymore.unfortunately this was the only dentist in our area on my husbands insurance so i had no choice but to have the root canal hot.it took him 3 treatments and two weeks to finish the job.

ever since then i have a great fear, not of the drill or the needle but of the anesthetic not working.

[BigMcLargehuge]

25. I have a root canal horror story too

the dentist told me the tooth was dead, it wasn't, and he wouldn't give me anesthesia. He was working with the increasingly small hand drills, when after approximately 40 minutes, I lost it.

I twisted the arms off his dentists chair, was nearly vertical in the chair, balanced on the nape of my neck, and screamed for him to take "this shit out of my mouth now!"

He did, plopped some tooth killer and a temporary filling in and let me go.

I passed out and went into shock walking through his waiting room to my car.

[barb162]

26. GEEZ, that's a real horror story

did you ever go back to that son of a bitch? Like to punch HIS fucking teeth out?

[barb162]

27. your fear sounds very logial after that experience

[Skittles]

24. I had to get a root canal on Halloween

the dentist said I'M GIVING YOU A HOLLOW TOOTH FOR HALLOWEEN. I said will you just get ON with it. Later he goes DO YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT I AM TAKING OUT? I said EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW, HELL NO, DOES ANYONE? He said SURE, LOTS OF PEOPLE DO. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

[Mika]

30. Not too many people think about the horrors of being a dentist.

Hanging over some people's filthy and rotten mouth and scraping off the last several years of lunch and dinner and booze and cigarettes is quite enough to gag a maggot.

Let's see you wimps do it. LOL (Just kidding. Don't try.)


There is no fee high enough for multiple impacted molar extractions. It f-ing hurts to put a dear patient through such an ordeal. But, most people wait for it to become an infected mess before doing anything about it. :shrug:

[Piltdown13]

31. Not me! :-)

I had my M3s out (all four at once) before they were even that close to erupting. I finished orthodontic treatment at about age 14, and the ortho took regular x-rays every year after that to check the position of the wisdom teeth -- their removal was a foregone conclusion, as I had major crowding of both upper and lower teeth, to the point that my treatment included that awful palatal expansion device. When they were close enough to the surface, it was off to the oral surgeon! It was actually a pretty decent experience; I had the IV sedation, and the last thing I remember from just before the procedure was hallucinating Day-Glo bugs crawling up the walls. I *did* get scolded when I came back a week later for a checkup. Apparently the stitches were supposed to fall out on their own, but most of mine were still present, because "you must not have chewed enough back there." Guess I just heal too fast; I spent the last part of that week "brushing" those stitches, which weren't even loose.

I do have a dental horror story, though...see post below.

[barb162]

28. 2 movie dentists, Steve Martin, "That's why I'm a dentist"

and Larry Olivier drilling Dustin Hoffman's good toothin order to get him to talk.

[Piltdown13]

32. When the Orthodontist Gets Too Ambitious...

It was near the end of my two and a half years in braces, and remove-braces day was nearing. My teeth now looked great, except for one thing: When I was about eight years old, I chipped both of my two front teeth on the monkey bars. This wasn't too terribly noticeable before orthodontia, because my incisors were also winged somewhat (they were rotated to face each other). But, now that the teeth were straight, there was a clearly noticeable crescent shape to the edge formed by those teeth -- points on each outer edge, curved upward between them (I probably lost about 1/5 or so of the length of those two teeth in the end -- just as well, as they started out as "Bugs Bunny" teeth), along with some irregularity all along the occlusal surface.

My regular dentist had been gradually sanding the rough edges down at each visit. Now, he may not have been taking the right approach; he was nearing retirement, and we actually had to stop seeing him because he FORGOT to clean the lower teeth on separate visits for both my mom and myself. However, my orthodontist had a very different approach. I remember him looking thoughtfully at the chipped surface and saying something like, "Let's just even those incisors off today." So, out came the diamond drill, which he used to file the points COMPLETELY down. Before we started, he told me I could raise my hand if it hurt and I needed a break, but it shouldn't hurt at all. Well, it hurt -- A LOT. I raised my hand, he stopped momentarily, and while I recovered he made some sort of signal to his staff. When he started in again, there was one assistant at each of my arms and a third holding down my feet, so that I couldn't signal for another break! It hurt like hell, but those teeth looked dramatically better, so I couldn't really hold it against him too much, though I *do* hope that there weren't any new patients being led past my chair!

(In his defense, I imagine that his, um, *skepticism* about the fact that this procedure was painful may have come from dealing with lots of whiny patients -- lots of spoiled kids, as he was the most respected and the most expensive ortho in town -- who probably screamed bloody murder during routine care, and I know they would have let me up if I had insisted. Still, in hindsight there's something fishy about having your assistants basically hold down your patient!)

[Mika]

37. There are different tools for the job

Not to second guess too much, but there are much more comfortable tools (for the patient) available now.

Young patients need to be treated with gentle care, or else there is the risk of scaring the crap out of them and they'll reject regular care later on.

I work with a thoughtful long term approach.

I hope you're OK now. :hi:

[Senior citizen]

33. Before the guy who pulled the wrong tooth

there was a dentist quite a few years earlier. I was in a lot of pain, so he pulled a tooth. It turned out that the tooth he pulled was somehow keeping the tooth next to it from collapsing, and that one was an "eye tooth" so the pain increased instead of decreasing.

But when I was on the east coast of Honduras, 2 days before I was to fly back to Tegucigalpa, I got a toothache and there simply weren't any dentists in the vicinity. So for two days I took aspirin every 4 hours--including at night as the pain woke me up whenever the aspirin wore off. Dentists are like cops--they're never around when you need them.

On edit: Worse than my tooth-pulling horror stories, to me at least, is the time I went to a dentist and he didn't change his gloves between patients, and stuck this horribly smelly glove in my mouth. I still want to throw up just remembering it. You can bet I've kept a keen eye on dentists ever since, and if there is the slightest possibility that they haven't changed gloves, I demand that they do so before they come near me.

[Sven77]

34. is it safe ? -Marathon Man

I have always had a fear of dentists. when i was young i never wore my headgear enough with braces. i havnt had a cavity in years, brush after every meal. only go to the dentist once a year, its a rip-off without insurance. getting a tooth filled is very painfull, i can never get enough novacaine. i ask for 2x the normal amount and it never works till im out of the dentist office. drilling is always painfull, plus the sound between your ears is frightening. my only good experience was getting my wisdom teeth taken out. they put me to sleep on the operating table and i woke up a couple hours later -4 wisdom teeth. ate cheese that night and had toast the next day. they did a great job.

[liontamer]

38. I've always had good denists so I'll talk about a technician

When I was getting my wisdom teeth extracted, the dentist asked the technician to do a better job of holding my mouth open. The tech then turned to me (who was drugged) and said, "can you please keep your mouth open, you're getting me into trouble".
She was fired within the week.

[Mika]

41. Umm. That's the assistant, not the tech

Techs are not certified to handle a patient directly. Assistants are.

Dental technicians are trained to fabricate prosthetic restorations, and are not licensed to handle patients.

[liontamer]

42. thanks

I wasn't sure which was which.

[Wickerman]

43. My Father is a retired dentist

he was and is a REPUBLICAN!!!! :scary:

[bearfan454]

45. I had 4 wisdom teeth removed at once while I was awake.

I was going to get out of the Navy in a month so I decided I had better get it done for free. Bad mistake. They shot my jaws full of zylocaine about 10 times and put a towel over my eyes. The idiot broke all of the teeth off and had to split the gums and dig out the pieces. I'll never forget that crunching grinding sound. I went back to supply headquarters and told them I was going to take the rest of the day off as per navy regulations. My cheeks were swollen up like a chipmunks. They told me fuck your day off sailor, we have ships in port. Get your ass to work.