A Patient's Valentine to the Office

So a year or three ago, my right top bicuspid (?! the fourth one back from center) started talking to me about dental health. Sensitivity to cold, sometimes to hot, the tooth aching... I hesitated about going to the dentist. "Hesitate" not in the sense of look left, right, and jump off the diving board. "Hesitate" in the sense of waiting about 250,000 minutes (six months) before acting.

Why wait so long, you ask? That's the point, we sez. Why indeed.

Six months on, I hustle in. I take the half day off, I sit there and get the weird cardboard things that pinch your gums, they do the X-rays, they tut-tut at whatever they see that they don't like... don't you floss daily, you cretin? ... large, large commitment of time and energy to have this thing looked at. From my point of view. (Do dentists listen to chiropractors about proper spinal care?)

One time I went to the doctor. He diagnosed diverticulitis... by pushing on my tummy, letting it bounce up, and asking whether it hurt when it bounced back up. I was in and out in a couple of minutes, and it was a pleasant conversation, too.

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Intermission: I like dentists, personally. If I were 20 again, I might go become a dentist: you're a doctor without the prostate checks and appendectomies and all that kind of stuff. I don't know how they're supposed to make visits faster and more pleasant.

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Anyway: first time I go in about the bicuspid, they do the X-rays and tell me that nothing is wrong with my tooth. Must just be sensitive.

When I was young and just a bad little kid.
My mama noticed funny things I did.
Like shooting puppies with a BB gun.
I'd poison guppies, and when I was done,
I'd find a pussycat and bash in it's head,
Thats when my mama said

(Backup Singers) What did she say?

She said, my boy I think some day,
will find a way,
To make your natural tendencies pay.

(Chorus)
You'll be a dentist. (You'll be a dentist)
You have a talent for causing great pain.
Son, be a dentist. (Son, be a dentist)
People will pay you to be inhumane. (Inhumane)

Okay. Several more months and it gets worse. How much worse? I go to a different dentist -- a discount dentist who speaks English rather poorly, who has halitosis and who is quite impolite to me. Dentist #2 does the bitewings, and talks with me while I have the cardboard in my mouth, and I try to tell him all about the case history of the tooth.

He's not interested. "You cannot trust what a patient tells you about what he is experiencing," he says rather irritatedly. (Don't get me wrong. He's just a guy doing a job, and I'm sure he was right.)

He can't find a thing on the X-rays. Finally he says, there may be a micro-something or other. Microhole? Microfissure? Micro return on my investment, is the point here. :- ) I don't have insurance.

I imagine that dentists very self-conscious about causing pain and about your not wanting to go see them. I dunno. I ain't sayin' I won't go fishin' with the man. I'm just saying if I have a better alternative, such as blogging about cavities, I'll do that first ...

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Maybe three or four months later, I take a swig of coffee and get an ELECTRIC shock in my tooth. Had to pull the car over. Lasted, I dunno, two or three minutes. Man, was I glad for that to finally stop. Was careful for a day or so ... later that week, another cup of coffee and BANG-O another ELECTRIC shock that runs all the way up my face.

After that, it didn't hurt any more. I surmised, later, this was the root of the tooth dying.

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The cavity got worse and worse; first I used a waterpik to clean it, and later I chewed a toothpick to the proper width to get up in there and clean particles out of the cavity. The cavity is, now, I would estimate, 20% of the volume of my tooth itself. Where there should be a root, and dentin, and a pulp cavity (are those the right terms?), there's whistling air.

Minor abscess?  I got so good at draining it that it was like flipping my hair back unconsciously ... I know, I know. What am I thinking.

Somehow the infection has never given me a day's cold or flu. Hasn't affected my system at all.

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I'll go back to the dentist, eventually.

Through nobody's fault, I just don't feel confident that things will get fixed right. I'm way too busy to commit half a day and not get it taken care of anyway.

I picture myself going in, and asking to have the tooth filled, and having the dentist take control of the conversation and tell me what I need done... not only on that tooth, but on every tooth. Doctors let me keep control. Dentists resist everything I say. It feels like trying to not take out the garbage after my wife has clearly instructed me to do so.

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What to do about the syndrome? I dunno. But I've toldja why I don't go. Takes too long, and the guy will argue with me about everything, and who knows if it'll be worth the time.

I'll go when I absolutely have to. :- )

Cheers,

Jeff