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It is now 2:30 am and normally I would still be at work with another 5 hours to go before completely my usual 15 hour shift. But tonight I decided to stay home after paying a visit to the dentist.
I broke a tooth the other night and with it being the holiday there wasn`t a dentist anywhere available so I ended up waiting until today to get in. I went into work last night and worked what seemed to be the longest shift ever as my mouth throbbed so much, I think I would have preferred having my face just melt away then go through that sort of shooting pain again.
At any rate, I called my dentists office only to learn he had recently retired, just as well since he was in his early 70`s and also suffers from Parkinsons. He wasn`t a bad dentist in the same standards that defines a good butcher. I`ve been in his chiar at times when his Parkinsons would kick in, twice when he was inserting the needle for the freezing, first time he ended up stabbing my upper lip, the second time he he stabbed my nose. Other times he had the drill in his hand and twice he ended up drilling the wrong tooth. I know I should have switched dentists right away but because he is not only a friend but we`re also members of the same Lion`s Club in our small little town.
I located a new dentist and with my luck he too looks like he should be holding a cane instead of a drill but I wasn`t going to complain, at least I was able to get in to get my tooth fixed. Turns out when he was in University my previous dentist would often appear as a guest speaker for the professor some 30 years ago. After hearing that the first thing I did was study his hands to make sure he didn`t have the shakes.
I was safe, no shakes. But Damn............did he ever have some stinky breath. There I sat, mouth jammed open with some contraption, a polymar protective sheet stuffed in my mouth so I didn`t end up swallowing or inhaling bits of burning tooth from him drilling while he did a root canal to extract any and all poisons, trapped food, etc from the past 3 days it was broken and the entire time he was 4" from my face. If I could have talked I would have told him to go next door to the pharmacy and get one of those breath atomizers. It was hard to figure out if he was on some sort of new fad diet consisting of dirty, stale sock or he had just puked in his mouth.. Either way it was nasty and damned near made me puke in my mouth.
What is it with some people, surely you would think that somebody in his profession, having to lean closely over his patients would ensure he`s at least got a handy pocket pack consisting of Scope for example.
Lucky me, I get to return to him on the 1st so he can complete the procedure. but I think when I go in then I will be sure to rub some Vicks under my nose, That`s got to be better than smelling rotting sock.
To think I used to get into so much trouble when I was in the hospital because I would do silly things such as pull the contact wires of my monitors, touch them together making all the alarms on every machine go off watching the nurses come running thinking im having a heart attack, I`d drag the CPR dummy tangle its feet up in the bed rails then pull the panic cord out of the wall to sound the alarms to keep the nurses on their toes or I`d just get into wheelchair races up and down the hospital.
How many others have had such or similar experiences with doctors, dentists, etc? Whether it be ice cold instruments, sock break or just poor bedside manners. |
