May 01, 2009

Toothie love!


The new summary is just that : RIP to my good old friend and welcome to the new implant.
There story is that yesterday morning I woke up to a little sore tooth. And I mean - just a little. Just a few weeks ago I had a filling fall out. And - of COURSE - after calling and seeing a doctor, he checked me out, CHARGED and said to schedule an appointment when he IS available ( apparently, he is only available immediately for charging, not fixing...) . So, the wait ... In the meantime , the "something" that is going around and making people sick decided to visit our household, and while touring through my body, really loved the pocket around my tooth. So , "it" stayed. In my tooth. And within hours ( and I really mean hours) , I went from being perfectly normal and happy person, to a completely miserable woman. With the inflamed site going from barely there to flaring up all the way to my sinuses, swelling and all , just like it is supposed to. :)
The fun, however , began when we desperately tried to get into the dental office. Apparently, most of the dentists have an agreement with their patients teeth, that the teeth are NOT supposed to hurt anywhere outside of the time range of Mon-Thurs 9am-4pm. And since our call came in after 5pm, we were politely told to wait until Monday. WITHOUT a pain medication. I really wish for any of those dentists to experience a tooth ache. Having a baby is NOTHING comparing to it. So, we started to call all the "emergency dental" places, you know , the 24/7 ones ( as THEY advertise). And what do you know : 30 + places later, the phone answering services said " please, leave a message, we will get back to you as soon as we possibly can". So... 11 pm - not a single phone call. My dear loving husband was ON the phone all that time trying to find a different place... A couple answered. And refused to give anything for pain OR swelling without seeing. AND refused to see until - the very earliest - morning ( 24/7 emergency????) . ALL suggested mega-doses of advil ( will talk about THAT later...) Some suggested to go to the ER ( so that they can send you back to the dentist? and charge for it??) . So... FINALLY, at 11:47pm some wonderful doctor answered. We drove to his office after midnight. BLESS YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS!!! So, after taking some x-rays ( but even without them) , he immediately said that something needs to be done. And done NOW. with the speed the infection was progressing, if left untreated , it would go straight into the brain, where the "it-visitor" already headed. The question remained was WHAT to do. The options given were : root canal retreat - oral surgery ( as it was a failing root canal, which would NOT be failing, if the filling would be places back ON TIME : gotta love the "original" doc!) , or extraction. Since with the infection in place, and the fact of how fast it was progressing, there was a 60% chance of the re-treat failing. And then STILL having to have to extract the tooth, except with the surgery done previously, a harder extraction. Or just get the toothie out. So, after talking to the dentist, and actually, feeling GOOD about his suggestions, we mutually decided to retire THE toothie and introduce the implant. We both ( actually, all three of us - the toothie , after all, was not happy with the situation either ) , decided that it would be a wiser, healthier and more productive option, as an implant is for life. Root canal for several years. So, on that note, the toothie RIPs now in the dental office.

NOW.. about those mega-doses of pain -killers, suggested by all other dentists... At about 2 am I learned what it is to have a drug poisoning. It is NOT lovely or pleasurable in ANY way. Fortunately, we had some remedies to help out to clear the body and a pump to get rid of the affected milk.

Lesson learned : system SUCKS. Good dentists are not doctors - they are good PEOPLE that LOVE what they do and actually do it well. Doctors - yet again confirmed - are businessmen. I REALLY hope Obama breaks the system down. A person in need of HELP needs to receive the help. After all - isn't this what they swear to do when graduating? I am SURE it does not say in the oath to work only Mon-Thurs , 9-4 and advertise as 24/7 emergency access. Oh, and the personal favorite : "Maybe , you should get a blessing to get you through the night".... Ehemmmm.... I DO believe in spiritual-emotional-physical connection MORE any any doctor does. But until I get to Heaven, I STILL have to deal with the mortal body. And I don't remember any dental school under the name of "Spiritual Dentistry". Do you?

6 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry for this process! I hate the runaround that so many doctors/dentists give...it's like they see you for two minutes, and then send you away, send you a bill, and tell you to come back later.

    Hope you enjoy the implant!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my gosh! I can't believe all you went through to see a dentist after hours! Wow. I had a similar situation and I had to call my dentist's "emergency" line after hours. He called me right back and said he would see me first thing in the morning. I also had some tyep of absess tooth or something, and half of the tooth had broken off (and as you know with a live tooth if that happens, the inside is very alive and lots of nerves and sensitive).

    I did wait until morning but it was hard. You did the right thing.

    Wow and only in UT would you heara random dentist over the phone tell you to get a blessing. Did he even know if you were LDS or not?

    ReplyDelete
  3. :) Yeah. It is NOT fun. I could not wait until the morning, unfortunately. "Our" dentist have moved his practice, plus Justin got a new insurance policy, so we had to search for a new one, and I've seen a couple of other dentists over the last year , but just for cleaning and check ups... And none of them really considered me their patient. The sad thing is that so many doctors
    claim "emergency" and really don't do anything. I think it is WRONG. The number of dentists that we called said that if it is true emergency I should go to ER, yet, we called the ER ( we figured it would be smarted rather then paying 300$ emergency deductable for hearing the same thing, and we were right.) and they said that all they can do is just give me a shot of novocain and then send me to the dentist as they have no way of helping with dental problems. MY problem really could NOT wait until the morning. The infection was spreading SO fast that over the hours it went from barely there to going right for my brain.SCARY. ANOTHER SAD thing is that one of the dentists that we called , prescribed me a medication , supposedly , for pain, that ONE was not even as strong as advil , TWO had a number of serious side effects ( as the dentist that helped me informed and suggested to stop taking it immediately) . PLUS that medication was not compatible with advil. As a result I got severe poisoning, and had to have my system washed through as I started to "drift off to a better place" yesterday. I am still really nauseated today, but at least I can think and not drifting off to sleep with weird hallucinations :) Basically, feels like THE WORST morning sickness x 100. And I can claim that I know that the worst morning sickness is :) I hate being sick. And I don't usually get "sick" ( pregnancy doesn't count, right? ) but when I do, it hits for 100%.

    Oh, the "blessing" dentist knew we were LDS :) Even worse thought, I think. Obviously, we already tried everything since we were calling in for emergency.
    I just love how people think that there is nothing that "serious". I have 2 friends that are dentists ( our of state , unfortunately, and one is going to be out of country soon - he is military), but while one , the military one, is a great one, the other is a totally self righteous git. And I told him that many times( hopefully, he is reading this too!) . But his "theory" is that if the teeth are not good, then it is that particular person's fault, as we ALL HAVE PERFECT TEETH. And ALL because in his 35 years he only had 1 cavity. Which I think has NOTHING to do with anything! My son - we fight to brush his teeth. NO CAVITIES. And he ate candy when was a baby, and always goes for dried fruit now. My daughter - a healthy eater, A TOOTH BRUSHER MANIAC - already has a cavity and she is 2 years younger. and her teeth even came in late - so , it's a myth that later teeth are better. Ooooh. Teeth... Man... I am just so grateful for newest technology.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow! What a horrific experience! I'm glad you were able to get it fixed, but at quite a price. Are you feeling better now? For someone who's not used to having all those chemicals in your system either, I bet the pain meds were quite a shock. Poor Olya! :(

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kacee can testify that teeth are not perfect. All teeth are different like all people are different. And some of us have our teeth grow in already decaying because their mothers were having gallbladder attacks during pregnancy that led to a poisoning of our baby teeth so we had to have capped teeth since they grew in until our adult teeth finally came in. Haha... Kacee's bitter. Well sorta.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a nightmare. I'm so grateful for that dentist.

    ReplyDelete

 
Pin It button on image hover