this is why i don't wanna be a dentist

I'm back! Yes, I'm still alive. Sorry for the long absence. Health Sciences First Year's not a walk in a park, especially when your memory relating to Physics stuffs has long been buried since 2009. Anyhoo, Dunedin's getting colder now that it's autumn already, and I went to class breathing out condensed water vapour. Awesome. Will post autumn-related photos to make you jelly later.

Yes, this entry is about my problematic tooth. I freakin don't understand why I keep having dental problems despite using flosses and Listerine and Darlie Lemon Fresh Whatever. I would like to blame the copious amount of soft drinks I chugged last week for celebration purposes, but then again, maybe it's just those damned natural selection survivors lurking in my premolar, wanting to take revenge over their defeat in the last antibiotic war. I TOLD that government clinic dentist to extract my tooth back in Malaysia, but he didn't want to, saying it's unethical and stuffs. Will definitely not go to a government dental clinic anymore after this. So yeah, last Sunday my tooth was giving off warnings about an impending infection, but I thought it won't be that bad. I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen? Turns out the next day, the worst thing happened. I was forced to be bedridden, crying and screaming bloody murder as the nasty little microbes gnaw their way through my tissues. Being the painkiller junkie that I am, I even took 10 tablets of paracetamol in less than 24 hours, much to the dismay of my liver and kidneys. At one point I was even thinking of calling the ambulance so that I could be taken to A&E and get myself a nice shot of antibiotic. And goddamn morphine. Anything to keep those little buggers quiet.

The next day, following the advice from a senior (who's also suffering from a crippling toothache), I went to the uni's Dental School, hoping that I could go home with an antibiotic prescription. I was told that there's a lot of people waiting to get their treatment that day, and it would probably take about half a day before I could finally meet the dentist. I thought what the hell, I have CELS lecture at 4, might be missing my only chance to see Adrien in class, so I postponed my appointment to Wednesday. Thinking that I might be exhausting my reservoir of paracetamol that night, I stopped by Albany Street Pharmacy to get more painkillers because self-medication is awesome. Gosh, the assistant pharmacist is damn cute! With a soothing and mesmerizing voice! He gave me Panadeine for my pain (thank God for opiate!) and I went to my CELS lecture only to discover that Adrien was not there. Sheesh.

On Wednesday, my tooth was getting a bit better, but I went for my appointment anyway. The staffs (dental students?) were very friendly, but I didn't make much attempt at conversations since I couldn't bother lifting my aching jaw. Oh, did I mention about having my lymph nodes swollen? Anyhoo, after going through my medical history and obtaining a radiograph of my lower left jaw, the lovely dentist confirmed the fact that my premolar was indeed infected. No antibiotics whatsoever this time, you either get extraction or root canal. Since I couldn't be bothered to have multiple dental appointments after this, I chose the easier (and cheaper) option: get that damned tooth out of my mouth.

In the Oral Surgery department, I was put under the care of a lovely dental student, who did her best to make me feel comfortable. She kept asking me whether I was okay, and assured me that I was "doing really good". What a pleasant dentist she would be someday. Her tutor came and supervised her throughout the anaesthesia procedure, and I heard her saying something like "rotating, superior, posterior...", possibly giving instructions to the student about how to yank off my tooth properly. I was a bit nervous (of course I was! It's my first time and I have a student pulling out my tooth!) but she told me I was doing really good so yeah. Everything went okay initially (I even asked for extra anaesthesia just for the hell of it) until I noticed that she was having difficulties with my tooth. After several minutes of yanking and rotating, there were no signs of my tooth getting loose from its socket, so her tutor came in and helped her. Just a bit though, didn't want to ruin the whole learning process. Second attempt after 15 minutes, still unsuccessful. Her tutor asked her to use another tool, and she continued to work on my tooth for about ten minutes more. Still no progress. Despite the anaesthesia, I could feel my nerves being pulled, and all those yanking and rotating made me feel like they would dislocate my jaw any time from now. More "you're doing really good" followed.

One peculiar thing about the dental clinic was that they didn't have any suction devices to suck out the saliva and blood from my mouth. They just kept dabbing my mouth with gauze to keep it relatively dry (I don't think a gauze is efficient enough to do that). At this point, the smell of blood was too much for me; I even felt a wave of nausea hitting me whenever they shove those bloody gauze into my mouth. Worse still, the gauze left a trail of bloody saliva across my cheek. I felt extremely uncomfortable, and tried to direct my attention to other things, but the smell of blood kept distracting me. More rotating and pulling action, still no remarkable result.

Another dentist (male, possibly Muslim) came into the room to see what took them so long to pull out my teeth. The student, possibly too nervous, managed to chip off the filled part of my tooth, which caused me to groan in distress. For no apparent reason, a drop of tear suddenly escaped from my eye! What's wrong with my tooth? What's with the army of dentists invading the room like I was some sort of a case study? What's that chipping noise again? Why the hell am I crying?? To make things worse, they noticed me crying, and the mak cik cleaner (who was also in the room - God knows why she was also there) gave me some tissues to wipe off my tears. Instant humiliation!

The tutor worked on my tooth for a little while before giving up, and passed the bloody job to her colleague, a young Chinese man. After what seemed to be an infinity, he finally managed to extract my tooth. Everybody in the room could not contain their relief and actually cheered! Now that's something new - dentists cheering in an op room like they had just delivered a baby. And I actually cried tears of joy like I almost gave birth to a baby! Sheesh, gila awkward. I glanced at the wall clock behind me - it was 4.20 p.m. (lol 420) and I was late for my meeting with Dr. Brunton. What the hell. After calculations I realized that they took a whole 1 hour to pull out my premolar. No wonder why they bloody cheered. Isk.

I went home without any antibiotic/painkiller prescriptions. With blood-stained face, I walked aimlessly around the campus, contemplating whether or not I should attend my HUBS lecture. Alas, I decided that I was too stoned to do HUBS, Adrien or no Adrien, and headed straight to Toroa. All hell broke loose after an hour when the anaesthesia wore off, and I moaned and cried my heart out in pain, alone in the room, thinking why the hell can't they just give me antibiotics.

The next day, I had a nasty post-op infection. Two days later, I went to get them checked only to discover that I may won't be able to claim my insurance because they didn't keep a record on the dentist who treated me on Wednesday. Up until now, the extraction site was still painful and filled with pus.

One hour and four dentists later, this.

At this point, I sincerely miss Malaysian dentists.

Alice

p/s: I'm not trying to say that dental care in NZ sucks - it's not, you see, the dentists are very lovely. It's just that, well, I was hoping for something better. But then again I went to a dental school so what do you expect kan.