Showing posts with label Dentistry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dentistry. Show all posts

Friday, 30 December 2011

Fat face!

Hopefully this will be the singularly most unflattering picture I will ever post here so if you have a mind to crack jokes take your chance now, the fact that my head appears to be rectangular I hope is down to the poor lens on my phone, the rest,well it is what it is!

As anyone who has visited here before will know (only too well I hear you mutter)I have some significant dental issues, the teeth all look fine but they are far from it. In part it's just misfortune, I have always taken good care of them but in larger part it's down to the inefficiency of the N.H.S. dental services and in my opinion, the greed of dentists. I won't regale you with the years of problems I have had, the are well documented here already and as ever I suspect the word 'greed' and 'dentists' in one sentence will lay me open again to comment hassle from the profession but it is a fact, yet again I am suffering because the dentist I currently have wouldn't carry out the treatment at N.H.S. charges (I am an N.H.S. patient), preferring instead to require me to pay the private fee of just short of £2000...or no deal! Gotta love the caring professions!

Anyhow, all that aside, Christmas Eve saw me begin to 'nurture' yet another abscess, hey, I'm used to the damn things, I have emergency antibiotics always on stand-by and I duly began the course but this one it transpired, was to be the mother of all abbesses and it paid little heed to the meds, in fact no heed at all and by Christmas morning the 'Fat Face' had grown to it's almost full glory.

I can honestly say I have never known pain like it. It was utterly horrible and not what I had asked Santa for at all!. Christmas Day was a wash out, I did manage to suck my way through the soft bits of a Christmas lunch but aside from that I spent most of the day either on the phone to N.H.S. Direct or waiting for their dentist to call me back. I was trying to ignore the 'comforting' words of my own dentist that one can expire from this ailment and even if I had I felt inclined too I couldn't even raise a smile....my mouth wouldn't move in the smile direction.

The long and the short of it is that I was referred to A & E, who much to my chagrin took the whole situation scarily too seriously for my liking but ultimately posted me back out the door with two types of antibiotics and a string of other instructions and pain meds. In total I was taking, until yesterday, 23 tablets a day. I don't do pain meds! Well not usually but really, this time it was off my usual coping scale.

I now merely sport a rather large gob-stopper in the side of my face, my eye and my chin seem to have reappeared, I am down to 18 tablets and I have an appointment late next week with a new dentist the hospital recommended.

Oh hell, now all I have to do is face the fear, it's going to be two root canals and an extraction is my best guess but I'm trying not to think about it......yet :(

....but on the positive side, though my holiday has been crap, it would have been a whole lot worse to have to go to work feeling like this!

Monday, 20 September 2010

One of 'those' moments!

Today was dreaded dentist day, those of you who have read here over time will know that me and dentistry do not a happy combination make by any stretch of the imagination! I hate it and nothing on God's green earth seems to prevent me from turning into a useless heap of quivering jelly from about 48 hours prior to any appointment....today wasn't any different and added to that it had a kind of horrible extra significance.

You see, despite my being, um.... a great big useless coward 'forty something,' wherever possible I have taken someone along with me for moral support...and usually that has been my dad over recent years. Given my age and my degree of fear this had become something of a tradition that caused amusement among the reception staff, a fact that was to prove quite difficult on this occasion!

This was to be my first dental visit since my dad died and my first alone for quite some years. The lack of my dad by my side chivvying me along with his unending humour was pretty much on my mind anyway when I walked in alone on very wobbly legs and with somewhat wobbly emotions this afternoon but I was about to get a whole lot worse.

I was greeted with a cheery 'hello' and a smile by the attending receptionist....who then continued by making a joke of my managing to be their alone for once and asking where on earth my dad was this time!

I hesitated for a moment and then without thinking just said "he's dead". I perhaps could have said it with a little more tact but I was taken by such surprise that I just blurted out what came, what followed was one of 'those' seemingly unending silences which spread throughout the reception area, while someone thought what to say next.

Rarely lost for words for long, even if they aren't always entirely appropriate words, it was me who broke the silence with another knee jerk sentence...."I suppose while I'm here then I should ask you to remove him from your list of patients shouldn't I". I don't think it was perhaps my best line but distracted said receptionist from her embarrassment and I shuffled into to the lions den so distracted I forgot to be scared anymore.

Maybe my dad helped me in his absence just the same!

Thursday, 17 December 2009

About bloody time!

So, I was pontificating recently over the multitudes of surgeries and treatments my dad had to undergo and endure in his fight against cancer, he was amazing, he went through some really major stuff including 8 hour surgeries,chemo and many other less than lovely things, and he barely uttered a word of complaint or showed more than the minimum of fear.

It kind of put into perspective my dental phobia, (which is well documented here if are are bored enough to want to read it) ok, so we are different people and we all react differently to fear but nonetheless, to be so terrified of having one tooth extracted, that has caused me pain for almost two years, began to seem a little pathetic.

It was thus that yesterday I took the bull by it's proverbial horns and made an appointment for said procedure to be carried out today....and I did it, the offending item is gone!! Yayyy!!

I will admit to having to have my sister in tow and to visibly shaking but I did it and I did it without my usual dental assistance, Valium!

If my dad can go through what he had too I can damn well have a tooth out, he kept telling me to get it done every time he saw me 'winding' food around my mouth or taking pain meds trying to avoid the pain, so I did it....and about bloody time!

*Oh....and it's snowing!!! Yipee :o)

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

I annoy me!

My dental traumas have long been catalogued here (see 'dentistry'tag) but to cut a long story short I have periodontal disease, the result of which is that over time my teeth are loosening and will fall out. Do not go there, the thought horrifies me let alone the reality but there is little to be done and right now, in fact for the last two years, I have one back tooth that really doesn't want to be where it should be any longer.

And thereby hangs something of a problem. I am dental phobic. I have dealt with it in the main, I have always gone to the dentist albeit under the influence of Valium, save for a period in Scotland when dentistry in the UK first became something of an economic stupidity between those practising and the government, but I have never managed to get a grip of the extraction carry on. No way. Nope. You are not pulling anything out of my head, I don't care how much anaesthesia you inject into me or how much you try to convince me it won't hurt, you are still not doing it Mr Dentist. Sorry, but just no!

So, I now have the aforementioned back tooth that is all but hanging on by a thread, it hurts all the time (they all hurt all the time courtesy of the perio. disease but this one is bad hurt), I can't eat properly, I constantly have infections, yada, yada, yada but can I get myself together enough to bite the bullet? (no pun intended) No! Seemingly I can't!

Jeez....I annoy me at times!

I did finally today persuade myself into the surgery in the hope that in my brave moment they would do the deed but it was not to be, they insisted I have an appointment. I insisted that would be pointless because I wouldn't actually make it, they insisted there was no other way, not even if I was prepared to sit and wait. I left, still with the offending tooth.

Back to square one!

I really must get myself together and sort this out but somehow, each time I try, my resolve weakens and I either cancel the appointment or 'leg it' at the last moment. I am a grown woman, it is wholly pathetic I know but knowing that doesn't help!

What is most galling is that my teeth themselves are nigh on perfect, nothing wrong with them... it's the jaw bone that's the issue so as if losing one's teeth isn't bad enough I will lose un-filled, un-capped, perfect working order teeth! Ack.

Did I mention I annoy me intensely at times?

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

A small step forward

If you can bear to wade through all of this please try, the important bit comes last!

As anyone who has been a regular reader here will know, I detest going to the dentist and whilst I am well aware that no-one relishes it, my dislike goes the irrational extra mile to a diagnosed phobia. However, not wishing for my teeth to fall apart I have had all the psych. treatments and have rarely missed an appointment in my life, save for the five years I lived in Scotland, where dentists no longer play the NHS game and as a consequence I couldn't even get registered!

All this effort paid off, or so it seemed. I have only two fillings to date, relatively pristine white teeth and all was looking well, my sleepless nights before an appointment and hours of sitting rigid and sweating in the dentists chair, employing one or other coping mechanism to prevent the 'flight' aspect of the flight or fight response catapulting me out of the door had worked, it was all worth it...wrong! Sods law of course just had to dictate otherwise!

I was recently diagnosed with advanced periodontal disease which for those of you not familiar is a severed form of what we usually refer to as gum disease and in it's early stages has few easily detectable symptoms. The 'lucky' ones get the early warning of bleeding gums, I didn't and added to that, mine was taking hold the time I was in Scotland and so through no fault of my own it went undiagnosed at a stage when intervention was important. I won't start though on all that again, it's well documented here previously and if you have a mind too you can find it all by clicking the 'dentistry' tag in the sidebar.

So, what's the upshot of all of this? Well, in a nutshell my otherwise perfectly healthy teeth are literally falling out of my head, one gone already, one as wobbly as a child's and most of the remaining molars beginning to wobble tentatively! For me, as I suspect it would be for many this is pretty horrifying not only for the obvious reasons but also in my case because it means lots of dental treatment in an effort to hang onto them as long as possible...though that may not be very long! Add to that perio. disease can be a factor in the risk of heart attack.

None of this was helped by an unfortunate encounter recently with a particularly brusque and unsympathetic dentist, who managed in one fell swoop to reinstate my previously almost beaten dental phobia in one visit, by telling me he needed to extract XYZ teeth 'now'...and wouldn't entertain either discussion or my fear. Needless to say I declined his offer and set about some research.

As a result yesterday I had an appointment with a private dental hygienist, even attending the hygienist fills me with dread these days, in fact the mere mention of anything dental does, quite literally even the word 'dentist' sends my anxiety and adrenaline levels sky high, so much so that this post has been a long time in coming, I couldn't even get it written down until now!

And that's where the title 'a small step forward' comes in. I made it to the appointment calm enough to hold a coherent conversation and not as high as a kite on diazepam and the woman herself was fab, she took time with me, she explained my options at length and with honesty and she promised me that whilst I will still likely lose some, if not all of my teeth, as long as I keep doing what she tells me she will make every effort to enable me to hang onto them as long as possible. Reading between the lines I also understood that I am not alone in having had issues with Mr nastybrusquedentistman, so I felt a little vindicated.

All that and I went on my own, which might sound amusing to most of you but it's only the second time in my life, at my ripe old age, that I have actually made it to a dental appointment alone! She spent almost an hour working in my mouth and not once did I have to ask for a break! I know that it maybe doesn't seem a 'big deal' to many, I know I shouldn't be so frightened but phobia, by it's very nature is irrational and I am quite proud of myself!

Now, the warning; Periodontal disease is caused by a few things, firstly it is something some of us just have a predisposition too, secondly stress is thought to be indicated as a cause but thirdly and most importantly, smoking causes it to advance much quicker than it would naturally, so if like me you thought the fags wouldn't get you, don't count on it....one way or another they might! There you have it, my own bloody fault in part at least, albeit when I began smoking no-one knew any of this. And just in case you are still in any doubt about just how much of a hassle this is, it hurts, eating is an issue, invariably at any given time I have parts of my mouth that are too painful to use or infections in my gum and cleaning my teeth has gone from the normal five minute job, to something much more protracted, in an effort to at least slow down the advance....no amount of money or dental work is going to fix it or cure it.

So, that's my next big issue...but please, no nagging, I don't respond to pressure but I'm onto it and getting to a place where perhaps I can take my next step forward.

Friday, 15 August 2008

Dodgy dentistry!

Yesterday was something of a harassing day one way and another and left me questioning what on earth has happened to professional integrity and customer service. What seems to be apparent is that they just don't figure any longer with any degree of importance in the worlds of corporate and economic gain!

I've split this into two posts, this and the one below.


After much research I eventually found a dentist yesterday that is taking on new NHS patients, so despite my fears I called them having been told by my doctor that I have to get the abscess situation sorted out properly. The conversation that ensued I find pretty concerning!

I was informed by the receptionist that before I can be considered for acceptance onto the dentists list I have to have a dental x-ray performed! Yes, I said 'before'. I queried why this was and the reply was somewhat vague and confusing I have to say. She seemed (I say seemed because she was so vague it was hard to decipher any real meaning in the conversation) to be suggesting that if the x-ray indicates I need much work I won't be accepted! Now forgive me here if you are a dentist reading this but it smacks yet again to me of dentistry in this country no longer being about care or integrity but being about making the buck! I know we all have to make a living and I appreciate many of the issues dentists have had over recent years with the government but at some point I wonder if they could stop in-fighting and consider us, the patient stuck in the middle!

But I digress. I questioned the receptionist further as to what I could do should I be denied treatment and was told I could visit the local emergency dental access service. I told her I had tried that but they could only deal with the initial presenting problem, i.e. prescribe more antibiotics in this case and along with my doctor had said I must have the underlying dental issue treated properly by a dentist!

Her response was that "I would be ok with more tablets"! I pointed out again that was contrary to all other information I had been given and that even those of us not medically qualified are now only too well aware of the problems of resistance in the over prescribing of antibiotics. I was met with silence...which I suggest says it all!

So, let me get this straight. The dental and medical professions say I have to have this dental problem dealt with by a dentist properly. The doctor says I can't have more antibiotics I have to see a dentist. The one dentist I can find wants to take the very odd step of x-raying before they accept me with a view to not accepting me if I need much treatment and has referred me to the emergency access center..... and the emergency centre tells me I have to see a dentist!

Where does that leave me....up the bloody dental creek without a paddle is where it leaves me and still with an underlying problem that isn't going to just fix itself! The doctor won't (and rightly) just keep prescribing willy-nilly, the access centre can't help and the dental profession is yet again sitting in it's ivory tower while our teeth rot and we suffer the pain.

I am so f*cking angry and fed up with all this.! I've had this hassle with dental treatment now for over six years on and off and it is part (though to be fair not all) of the reason I am now likely to lose my teeth before time. Come on guys, we are a nation who were lucky enough to have the education and facilities to have healthy teeth, this is not a third world country and it would be kinda cool if you could all start showing some integrity and stop trying to turn it into one dentally!

I've had enough now of the excuses and of understanding how hard done by our dental professionals are, we all have to live within the constraints our laws and governments decisions inflict on us but we don't all have the power to inflict continuing pain and discomfort on the poor sods caught in the middle! Where's the pride, integrity or professionalism in that?

If dentists still have an issue with their 'terms and conditions' take it up with those who impose those terms by all means but stop using the likes of me as a bargaining chip because it's unfair, inappropriate and does absolutely nothing to help the cause...which I have to say, when all this began years ago I supported.

I don't any longer.

Just sort it out and start behaving with at least some degree of care and integrity please!

Oh...was that naive of me? Sorry.

Tuesday, 12 August 2008

Fat face!

Joy!

Now on top of everything else I have a tooth abscess! It hurts, I'm hungry, I can't eat and I've got the right hump!

The quack was finally persuaded to prescribe me some anti-biotics this morning after much ado and 'words' about dentists, which incidentally, even if I could deal with the financially motivated oral professionals dentist malarkey right now I can't find one yet again who has any places on a list,....but I've done the dentist issue here til I'm blue in the face so I won't start that one again!

Yup, I've definitely got the hump today....and I can't even eat any chocolate. ppfftt.

Monday, 23 July 2007

All done, dusted and drilled!

Today marked my final visit to the dreaded dentist and the completion of all the work that needed attending too, only a filling this time but a damn big one.

But what was special about this particular visit was something else....the fact that for the first time in my life I plucked up the courage and went alone, completely unchaperoned, no friend, no father, no partner...just me, all by myself and dealt with one of my biggest fears! :o)

Thursday, 12 July 2007

Bright, shiny and new!

Finally, after five years in the dental wilderness I can see a light at the end of the tunnel! It's nearly all over and in a weeks time I can heave a big sigh of relief that for a while at least I don't have to psych myself up on a fortnightly basis to lie prostrate and terrified sit in the dreaded black chair.

This afternoon was my penultimate appointment (hurrahhhh), this one was to have the temporary crown removed and the real one fitted. The job was duly done, and I might add with minimal anaesthesia, despite having a problem with a touchy nerve in the tooth in question, believe me, I would rather suffer the 'ouch factor' than have one of the '10 seconds in the roof of the mouth' jabs that it would have usually entailed! They hurt like hell, even the dentist himself is only to happy to admit they are no fun at all.

And that was that, 20 minutes later I was sporting a bright shiny new tooth where for at least the last ten years there has been some shambles of temporary repairs.


It didn't come cheap, the NHS will only pay for a gold one (ugh) which at £200 is
hardly a bargain but I needed wanted a white one which comes in at £300. Luckily for me someone very kindly helped me out with the extra bit that I couldn't afford (thank you, you know who you are) and so now I don't have to feel like a character from a James Bond movie each time I smile! :o))

I'm actually quite proud of myself, I have a real serious problem with the dentist and it's taken me years to get this done but at last I did it and although the problems with my teeth are ongoing at least I've got over one big hurdle with them.

Thursday, 28 June 2007

Crowned!

Jeez....for someone who is truly terrified of anything remotely associated with dentists and dentistry I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time glued upside down in one of their confounded chairs of late!

Today again it was my nightmare privilege to be subjected to more toothy torture. Lately I have been diagnosed as having a specific problem, the result of which is that I will likely loose most of my teeth sooner than I would like, this in turn causes other 'delightful' problems to present themselves...one of which is a tooth needing crowning that may or may not last more than a few weeks/months!

Oh joy, so I have two choices, have it removed (fat chance!) or have the crown fitted at a cost of £300 and hope that the underlying problem doesn't mean that it will only last a few weeks a few weeks!....I opted for the latter having been told that having a crown is 'childs play', ok, so the actual phrase used might have been slightly less polite but you get my drift!

So off I went to the dentist, this on it's own is no mean feat, it takes a week of no sleep, a degree of badgering by those nearest and dearest to me and for my father to accompany me (yes I know I'm 40 something) to get me there at all. But get there I did and surprisingly in somewhat less of a 'tizzy' than is the usually the case....and into the chair I went.

And it is at this point I would like to take issue with those who mentioned the phrase 'childs play'. Ok, so dentistry isn't my forte, accepted, but I fail to see who on earth would find this experience even remotely easy.

For forty minutes I endured continuous drilling, lumps of choking plasticine stuff jammed in my mouth and six (at the last count) injections, at least two of which were the the particularly painful 'twenty second (seems like an hour) roof of the mouth jobs' during which you can't help but scream murmur an indication of pain!

I think as I re-emerged into the waiting room looking for all the world like a stroke victim and as white as a sheet I probably didn't do much for the confidence of those waiting still to be seen by the torturer....but hey, I have a temporary crown in place now and they promise me the next part isn't anything like as unpleasant.

Yeah right, didn't they tell me that about this visit?!!

.....and 7 hours later the large amounts of anaesthetic it seemed to take to deaden half (literally) of my head is only just wearing off....no dribbling jokes please!

Tuesday, 1 May 2007

I knew I hated the dentist!

And today has only confirmed it!

Today, motivated by pain as opposed to bravery, I was forced to into the dreaded dentists chair for a check up. Last time I was in this position, the one where your head is nearing the floor, your feet are somewhere you have lost track of and your head is seemingly held fast by some invisible brace, it was for an extraction. That had not helped my feeling of anxiety for future visits though in defence of the dentist on that occasion, he was fabulously understanding and gentle.

Today's sadistic b*astard 'minister of oral care' it would seem, is very much opposed to we evil smokers and appeared to do his level best to cause me pain and scare the living daylights out of me!

Now, I accept that smoking is a major contritutary factor to my current dental problems, though even the dental fraternity were unaware of the impact of smoking on peridontal desease until approx. 15 years ago.

As a lay man I think I can be excused for not knowing this information until recently, particularly given that I was unable to be seen by a dentist at all, courtesy of the lack of NHS practitioners, for about half of that 15 year period! I fail therefor to see how poking things into my gums until I shrieked or telling me horrendously frightening stories was designed to help someone like myself' who already has problems with anxiety just trying to make it into the chair. Perhaps I should have encouraged him to scan my notes briefly before he set about scaring me so witless with only the result that I am much more likely never to darken a dentists door again.

The last guy helped me begin to feel I could deal with dentistry, this guy has firmly set me back but it seems I cannot have 'Mr nice dentist' complete the work that 'Mr scary dentist' has begun.

So the upshot of all of this is that smoking has caused my gums to recede badly, hence my otherwise (mostly) healthy teeth keep working loose and having to be removed. The prognosis is not encouraging, I think it unlikely I will see old age with my own teeth unless, and this is the million dollar question, I can quit smoking. Even if I do the damage is not reversible but it will at least not get signifigantly worse with a little luck.

I need two big fillings and one, maybe two extracted and not only am I miffed yet again with myself for ever starting smoking but I am also wondering just how I am going to pluck up the wearwithall to get my body back into the chair so it can be done.

This is not good, I am not a happy bunny right now...I knew I hated the dentist, as a profession I hasten to add, not the individuals, save for today's terrorist.

I wonder.....just what did he think he would achieve by treating me as he did when on the top of my notes in big red letters it states 'severe dental anxiety'??!!!

Seems somewhat counter-productive to me.

Thursday, 31 August 2006

It's a conspiracy

Yesterday was the dreaded day for my first round of dental pummelling. You may or may not (probably not) remember my posting on my recent visit for a check up, the first in five years courtesy of Scotland's lack of dentists prepared to work on the NHS.

On that occasion I was cheerfully informed I needed a crown but I would be contacted further if anything more showed up in the X-rays. Something more did show up...apparently two small fillings, today I was to have the first of these.

Now, my phobia of dentists has also not gone unmentioned here. Well, it's not so much the dentist. him or herself presents no problem but the procedures they carry out do....a big problem, the biggest of which is extraction! But, having met 'Mr Very Nice Dentist' at my check up and having been assured he understood my fears and that I was to have a filling, I set off this morning only half scared to death.

Upon my arrival, with the benefit of hindsight, the receptionists greeting of me was marginally strange, she appeared slightly uncomfortable but in my state of nervousness I barely registered her existence let alone her manner, and so in I went when I was called, full of bravery......only to be informed by 'Mr Very Nice Dentist' that the tooth I thought was to be filled actually required extraction!!!! Yes, he could possibly repair it with two or three hours work but it would only last a year or two and alternatively it could be wrenched from my mouth brutally removed painlessly, in a matter of seconds.

At this point my flight or fight response kicked in big time, my body suddenly knew it was harboring way too much adrenaline and in that horrible state of trying to hide near panic, I tried to listen coherently to 'Mr Very Nice Dentists' advice.

There was it seemed nothing really to decide. My five year lack of dental care (Thank you Scotland's NHS, I love you too) had resulted in a pretty crap tooth and out it had to come and so hanging onto the nurses hand for dear life, trying to somehow not behave like a small frightened child, I gritted my teeth (pun intended) and we went for it. Four large injections later (yup, it wouldn't 'numb up' with the usual two, oh joy) and a swift and practiced wrench and the offending tooth was history, amazingly I am still here to tell the tale!!!...... Though I did require to be left prone for ten minutes before I could maintain an upright position without assistance, my legs didn't really know what they were doing for a while, my hands shook uncontrollably and I was damn glad I had my dad with me to drive home!

So why the 'conspiracy' title...because the dentist knew all along, as did his nurse and receptionist that the tooth was to go but he also knew that if he had told me in the original phone call what was to be done, I would have never shown up!

This guy certainly has me sussed and he was of course right. At the very least I would have had a fair few sleepless nights prior to the dreaded appointment and indeed would probably have cancelled...as it is, it's all done and dusted and whilst I might feel like I've been punched in the face right now by someone with significant upper body strength, it's a good job done with a minimum of cowardice and hoo ha!

The guy is a bastard star! :o)

Anyone got a straw?

Thursday, 3 August 2006

Open wide!

So yesterday was the day of the dreaded dental visit, for whilst I have been unable to secure for myself a place with a dentist for the last seven years....I didn't actually have a great wish to visit one, just a need to. The fact that I couldn't did have a positive side in that I wasn't forced to look the demon drill in the eye and handle the gut wrenching fear it instills in me!

But yesterday was the end of the line and with a broken tooth to attend to and my father as moral support off I went looking considerably more cheerful than I felt about the whole process.

Dentistry requires way more trust in an individual I have never met than I would usually consider it wise to show but my ignorance of the subject requires, like most of us, that I offer myself up like a lamb to the slaughter, close my eyes and hope for the best whilst trying not to notice my sweating palms, banging head and impending panic attack.

And thus it was, almost upside down and braced for the worst the guy could hit me with that amazingly I survived....yup, I am still alive and more amazing even than that is the fact that this torturous appointment was in fact not torturous at all! More specifically it was a walk in the park, it didn't hurt one iota, he didn't pull my mouth in that way that feels like one is competing in an international gurning contest and there was none of the prodding with heinous tools of torture in the darkest recesses of my mouth!

The guy was a star, completely understood my fear and worked with me on it, the whole incident was over in a few minutes and my confidence that I can cope with the next stage is boosted.....for there is a next stage to be faced. One crown and one filling, not bad after seven years of no treatment but whilst I can't say I am exactly looking forward to it I will perhaps sleep the night before the next time.

All that remains is to raise the £300 for the bill. Of course whilst I am in receipt of benefits I could claim reimbursement for treatment but not for the most appropriate treatment of my problem. That of course is not covered, so as ever seems to be the way if I want the job doing properly I'm gonna have to pay up and look happy.....hey, it will be worth it, the treatment offered on the NHS is liable not to last too long and £300 to only have to do this the once seems a bargain.

However less of a trauma it was than I imagined, a visit to the dentist will remain in my top ten list of things I wouldn't choose to do for fun but it was considerably more bearable than my little mind envisaged! :o)

Monday, 17 July 2006

I don't believe it!!!



Finally after over five years of searching I have found a dentist!!!!!.

Quite why I should be so happy about that I'm unsure given that the whole dentistry 'thing' scares the wits out of me but having been dentist-less for so long common sense (yes there is a modicum in there somewhere)dictates that my tracking down someone prepared to take me onto an NHS list is reason almost to crack open a bottle of something expensive.

This breakthrough has of course been prompted by a small dental disaster...that of a large part of a particularly rumbunctious tooth having decided to drop off over the weekend, sending me into a small state of panic in realisation that I would again have to take up the challenge presented by our government and dentists over the last few years.

So take up the challenge I did and whether I was just lucky or whether the South of England merely has more user friendly dentists than Scotland did I don't know, but suffice to say on the 2nd August, at last, a dentist will peer into my mouth...ok, so it hardly constitutes an emergency appointment but I can live with half a tooth for a few weeks and I'm not sure I want to know the 'what I need doing' bit anyways quite yet!

Bring on the Vallium!

Monday, 7 March 2005

Well, who'da thought it!

Mr dentist man, 'George', the guy who by leaving a comment a few days back on a very old post prompted probably the longest set of comments here thus far, has very kindly offered to take a look at my molars!

The logistics and timing have yet to be arranged, the fact that we are 400 miles apart is not a big issue, his practice is but 10 miles from my parents. Finding a mutually convenient time among all the things I have to do whilst there maybe slightly more tricky but it's a start...... and a damn sight closer than I have been to seeing a dental professional for years.

It'll be kinda odd to meet face to face, if I ever make it, with a guy who's profession I was essentially slating but it just goes to show how nice people in the blogosphere can be and how surprising life is.

Sunday, 6 March 2005

Sunday~sundown

On the assumption that you have had enough of snow and dentistry for a while........ tonight's sunset.

(Click to enlarge)

Sundown 06.03.05


Sundown 06.03.05(1)

Thursday, 3 March 2005

Dentistry again.....or lack of

Many months ago, in June of 2004 I posted on a situation that I found very frustrating. The inability in the UK over the last few years get a dentist. You can read the original post HERE.

Nothing has changed, months later I still can't get dental treatment and the situation still frustrates me.

The reason I bring it up again is that today, all these months later that post received a comment from a dentist. I am hoping that he or she does not object to my publishing that comment as a post given that the original was already in the public domain when the comment was made.

My intention is not to turn this into a slanging match, rather to re-open a discussion I feel strongly about now I have the opinion of an individual from within the dental profession.

What do you think?

This is the text of that comment:

Anonymous said...
I will attempt to set some things straight because I believe the government has misled the public with lies about "greedy dentists" for decades now. The only reason dentists are abandoning the NHS is that the fees they are paid are downright ridiculous for the highly skilled job they are supposed to do.

Let me give you an example of exactly how much the government values your health:
A filling on a child is less than a donner kebab.
An extraction is less than a music CD.
A root canal treatment on a front tooth, on which outcome the future of your tooth depends, is less than a playstation game.

So dentists were forced to see a huge number of patients each day (sometimes 30-40, that's the largest in the western world) and use only the cheaper materials. Ask any dentist in the US or the better parts of Europe and they will tell you about the appallingly low quality of NHS dentistry.

Many of us decided that they're not going to play the government's game anymore and stopped compromising our patient's health just because the government is used to buying dentistry on the cheap. Who can blame those who took that step?

As a last point, I'm a dentist and proud to be member of the profession with the highest suicide rate (so life isn't exactly rosy for us, as people tend to think), and I currently work in the NHS, but I will leave on the first chance I get. A few weeks ago the government announced that the new computer network for the NHS will cost 20-30 billion pounds. That's enough to pay for 30 years of dentistry at the current level, or 10 years of dentistry at a high quality level. But they're going to spend it on computers. Politicians have got their priorities seriously wrong.


And this is my reply:

Anonymous: Firstly thank you for taking the time to comment, it's good to get the opinion of the 'other side'.

Ok, now onto the points you raised.

I can accept without too much difficulty that the government has attempted to mislead us, the general public' with regard to the dental profession's greed, it would not be the first time and I am sure it will not be the last but were many of you not trained as I stated in my original post, at a time when most of the current situation was already in place and was the training not at the expense of this country? I know there are many dentists in the UK from overseas but presumably though not trained here there was something in our system that attracted them to practice here?

I doubt there are many employees of our NHS system who are happy with their lot, I myself worked within the system for a short time and found the entire experience very negative but the one big difference between dentists and the other employees from where I am sitting, is that the others carry on their duty of care regardless. Yes many doctors practice privately along with carrying out NHS work and yes I can jump a queue for surgery with cash but ultimately if I cannot afford that surgery, I will get it in time via the NHS. That is very much not so where my teeth are concerned!!

I appreciate that your profession is highly skilled and should be appropriately remunerated but it is a fact of life that most of us are not in reality salaried as we feel our work deserves. Dentists are not alone in that. We mere mortals just don't have the power to hold the government, or those we serve in our occupation to ransom!

Believe me I would like to have more respect for the dental profession but the bottom line for me is that I had a set of teeth that had been well looked after all my life and are now not as they should be. I am completely unable to get a dentist via the NHS and in fact where I live have been unable thus far to get one even privately......though how I would pay him or her if I could remains a mystery.

I do not apologise for my belief that dentists were in my mind akin to doctors, nurses, medical professionals of other specialities, the police, paramedics and the fire brigade. These are ALL highly skilled individuals who choose to go into a profession of caring. They differ from dentists in so much as despite their sometimes appalling conditions of service and salary they continue to care for those that require their skill. Their frustrations with the system within which they are employed do not affect the service user to anything like the magnitude that the dental professions behaviour has!

I cannot dispute the suicide rate, I have no evidential statistics to support or deny your claim but I do know various professions claim to hold the 'highest rate' accolade. I'm not sure what causes the pressure in dentistry, I am assuming workload. Sorry, but have any of you tried struggling with the day to day stressors and a heavy workload with your teeth causing you pain for years??

Bottom line: I can't see a dentist because dentistry is unavailable to me, both actually and financially and I don't understand how a caring profession can justify hurting the very people they claim to care for in pursuit of economic gain. One thing is for sure, those in government who your battle is with are not suffering, it is us, your patients that are doing that.

I am not going to argue the point that you as a profession are not 'well off' for that is relative. I only know that I don't see too many dentists living in the poor part of town or with holes in their shoes.

The situation continues to anger me. Strangely I am scared of dental treatment and it took me many years to become comfortable (ish) with it, now on top of rotting teeth I have to overcome that fear again should I be fortunate enough to ever receive the attentions of a dentist.


Addendum: Anonymous, I wonder.......before you leave the NHS, you wouldn't by chance have room on your books for one more would you?

Monday, 21 June 2004

This sticks in my craw

I apologise if you are a dentist and reading this.....well actually,no I don't!

Dentists and the dental profession are currently on the top of my rant list and have been for the last few years.

We were all bought up to take care of our teeth, told time and time again that they are precious and to lose them would be terrible, had fluoride put in our water systems and marched fearfully every six months to the local dentist for a check up and any appropriate treatment.

What was that all for then when years later we discover that the dental profession is so damn greedy that thousand upon thousand of us now don't have access to a dentist at all!

I for one have been unable, despite many attempts, to see a dentist for nearly 3 years. The only option now open to me is to wait until a dental problem becomes severe and attend the accident and emergency department of my local hospital. So much for preventative measures and all the crap trotted out by this profession regarding early treatment and diagnosis! On one such visit I was 'patched up' by a very nice guy who then told me, with a wry smile, that I needed to get a dentist and get the problem treated thoroughly, he added almost as an afterthought that I would be unable too and that he would expect to see me again!!

There has also recently been much advertising by the British Dental Association regarding awareness of oral cancers and the need to have a dental check up regularly because as ever with the big C, early detection is integral to a successful outcome .......fat chance!

Do these 'professionals' not have a duty of care similar to that of a doctor, were many of them not educated in our schools and universities? Where then is their sense of fair play. It would appear that many of them don't see dentistry as anything more than a means to make a buck. Those currently practicing chose to go into the field when the NHS system was intact and so presumably understood how poorly paid (not) etc. they were going to be, before they even commenced their education, so why the sudden about turn? Economic self gratification is my guess!

So I have no great political understanding, I'm not completely aware of all the arguments I'm sure dentists present, I'm just a ordinary 'Jane Doe' and maybe you lot have a point, though I'm damned if I can see it. What I have yet to see is a poor dentist living in the rough part of town unable to feed his or her family!

Project this situation ten or twenty years and maybe I can see where you are all coming from. We will have a nation of individuals with horrendous dental problems and you will, if you haven't already done so by operating solely in the private sector, make your fortunes repairing all the damage caused by the current situation. You can't lose!!!

I don't want to hear you blame the government, the NHS or anyone else for that matter. We all live within those constraints one way or another. This is no longer for me about whether or not I can afford private treatment (which incidentally I can't) it is about not wanting to line the pocket of a profession that it appears to be without morals or integrity!!

I hope you can all sleep in your [water] beds at night!