This one's for Snuffy (not suitable for minors or the verbally sensitive)

One of muh knittas has been abused by a member (and I mean that in the most phallic of contexts) of the medical community, and I just wanted to take this evening's (oops, it's already tomorrow... again) morning's post to tell a tale of medical malfeasance I was forced to endure when I had to get a tooth pulled. Stephanie's ordeal was horrifying, and she was treated shamefully by the doctor, and in no way am I trying to "go her one better", because I would've had a police escort out of her doc's office, and some of you would be scrounging my bail money (I would hope, anyway!) right about now. Anyway, in the spirit of sharing horror stories, here's why I despise a particular oral butcher who operates in central Indiana. The Nazis would have loved him for his 'mad skilz'.

This story begins with a lil' fat girl who decided she'd like to have shiny teeth, so she bought some 'Pearl Drops tooth polish' (dumb thing #1). As luck would (not) have it, her parents had come to visit her home and to keep the dad-guy busy, all the old plumbing in the house was replaced with copper (good, but as fate would have it, dumb thing #2). Turns out, roughing up her fillings with the tooth polish and the resultant water softener/ion/copper metal reactions created a condition called "galvanic shocks" in her mouth whenever the upper and lower fillings touched... like chewing foil. (I know, and it gets worse.)

Finally, after a mere decade of suffering, our lil' fat heroine gives in and has her fillings drilled out (ugh, told you it'd be worse) and replaced with resin. Oh, if only it were that simple. Side One went well, but a molar on Side Two was nerve-damaged and a root canal would not guarantee a successful outcome, so it was scheduled to be removed. Que 'the good doctor'...

Initial meeting: okay, this guy has a mullet, and graduated from Louisiana, but hey, I'm not one to hold geography or lack of proper hair maintenance against someone. Besides, he was on the referral sheet, so he has to be okay, right? Fast forward to me, getting a minuscule dose of the sedation I'm paying Big Bucks for, and the next thing I feel is searing, blinding pain and more pressure than my brain can process and I can feel the tooth being wrenched from my jaw. Mind you, I've been given a drug to 'sedate' me, I have tools and stretchers in my mouth, and I'm strapped, waist and arms, to the chair. As I'm shrieking and trying to get away from this wretch of a "dentist", and tears are streaming out of my eyes, he has the nerve to yell at me... and this is precious, really...
"Put your fucking legs down, you fat cow, before you break my god damned chair."

How 'bout you stop scrimping on the meds people pay you for, dumbass.

The nurse, who I later found out was either his wife or his not-the-wife, ponied up a big dose of whatever they didn't use enough of in the first place, and I spent the next twelve hours as a zombie. When I finally came to and confronted the office manager about the experience, I was told I'd imagined the whole thing, so I quoted back what he'd said to me as I writhed to get away, what the 'nurse' did in the room, and a few other tidbits that I could recall. The stunned expression on the office manager's face was priceless, and she stopped denying anything had gone 'awry', though I could never get an apology from that backwater butcher.

In the ensuing years, I have now 'grown' a titanium root implant where that ill-fated molar was removed, and a snappy new porcelain crown rests atop it. That surgery was so far removed from the horror of the extraction; night and day have more in common. Finding a decent, capable, and concerned oral surgeon has saved my few shreds of sanity, and given me the security that if I ever need any type of sedation again, I can be well assured it will work. (I could regale you with the 22 minute "lumpectomy" I had done in a surgical center where the doc couldn't get me numb, but he worked fast and we got through it... I swore a LOT and ground my teeth, his nurses told horrid jokes, we put the music up loud, and I tried not to jump every time the cauterizer zapped me. Point being, he showed compassion in a bad situation neither of us wanted to be in. Character counts.)