...but I waited until an emergency to see a new dentist once.
I had a bad sports accident in high school and sustained some damage to my jaw and many of my teeth. Afterward, I was left with a number of root-canaled, crowned teeth. I was told these teeth wouldn't last forever, but I'd been through enough at the time and didn't want to go straight to dental implants (OUCH!).
Fast forward thirteen years and I was just starting my first job after grad school. I started to get some aching, which quickly escalated to agony, and noticed a black ring all the way around the base of one of those root canaled, crowned teeth. I let it go a couple of days (I was busy, you know) until I could wiggle the tooth with my tongue and had a bad taste in my mouth. It was abscessed and looked like Tom Hanks' tooth in Castaway.
Of course, being new in town, I had no dentist and so I began asking around the office for recommendations. I tried calling several, none of whom could see me on short notice, before a friend mentioned that there was a dentist in his karate class. In retrospect, I should have kept dialing, but I made an appointment with said martial artist and drove waaaay out towards the edge of town for my appointment. When I pulled up, the office was sandwiched between a dry cleaners and a taqueria. I had a real bad feeling, but then again, that tooth really needed to come out!
So I went inside, got my x-rays taken and was escorted down a hallway to the last exam room. The next to last door was closed as I walked past, and the doctor got me situated quickly in the chair. He got to work right away, kinda-sorta numbed the area up, and started in on me. About then, I heard a long, pitiful moan come from the next room. The doc and I made brief eye contact, but he ignored the sound until about a minute later, when the moaning began again with increased urgency.
Muttering a "damn" to himself, he told me that he needed to "finish something" and would "be right back." He jammed my mouth full of gauze and told me to breathe though my nose. He then left and went into the next room, where I gather he picked up where he left off on his other patient 10-15 minutes before. After he had been gone for awhile, my numbness started to wear off and I became fearful of gagging, since my mouth was stuffed full of gauze and I was swallowing buckets of blood and puss. It was probably about that point that I let out my own moan.
Well, Doc was back in my room post haste and looking madder than hell. He bent over me, looked me in the face and asked, "You gonna shut the f*@! up or should I leave you like this?" Needless to say I went back to gagging quietly.
But hey, odoylerules, your luck might be better than mine. No reason to get your wisdom teeth yanked by a trusted source!
