Friday, August 24, 2007

Dentist visits should not be so exciting.


Here is my little tale. So Wednesday I go to the dentist to have some work done on one tooth. This is the third time to this dentist (the tooth required a three-part procedure) and I found him to be very good. So he is cleaning out the inside of my tooth with this solution in a syringe. Somehow this syringe breaks or the ends comes off, I am really not sure which. The solution - I think they said is bleach-based - goes flying everywhere. Most of this goes into the dentist's face, but some splashes on my cheek and dribbles down into my eye. Wow this is starting to burn. So I inform the staff of this. I don't really remember how I said this but seeing that I have in my mouth both a huge mass of cotton and the hose that vacuums away my spit I can only assume it was a mumbly form of "ouch it burns!!". But for the purposes of this story I calmly said "I think some of it got in my eye because it now burns some". So the hygienist starts rinsing my eye out like crazy with water.

One nice thing about the dentist's office it is in the basement of a hospital. Never thought about how really convenient that is till now. The dentist ran upstairs himself during this time to have his eye flushed out since he got quite a bit too. Before doing this he instructed another dentist to quickly close up my tooth and then have someone take me upstairs to have my eye looked at. So once the tooth was closed, off I go upstairs with the hygenist. Her name is Lan and she is very nice.

When I got upstairs a doctor was called to flushed my eye with sterilized water. His name was Patrick. Very nice doctor but I swear he looked so Irish he could have been throwing punches with an Italian chap in Philadelphia. So he begins to try and flush my eye out and I must say it is not going particualarly well. I never had anything done to my eyes in my life because I have always had excellent vision. So when someone tries to do something like rinse them my reaction take over and I close my eye tight like a vise. The problem is this does not help flush them of the bleach solution. I tried my best to help out but I was not very useful. They ended up having a nurse help keep my eye open as he flushed it with sterile water. Once the eye was flushed out pretty well they sent me to an Optometrist.

We had to wait a few minutes until the Optometrist could see me. He checked my eye out and said there was no permanent damage. He put an antiseptic in my eye and then put a patch over it that I had to wear till the next morning, then he gave me drops I have to put in my eye daily for a week. Till it was all said in done this was the most exciting and painful dentist visit to date. I hope I don't get another one to challenge it. Of course, I still have to go back because we never finished the procedure I had gone to the dentist to have done. They were not able to reschedule me until early October, so I may have to cancel the visit if Lynne is in labor. At least I'll already be at the same hospital!

2 comments:

Concerned C-villian said...

I'm NOT reading this entry until after my dentist visit in 2 weeks time. I will post my reaction at that time, but I don't want to "spoil" my always-so-delightful dentist experience. They will do it just fine on their own. Until then, I hope you feel better Terry.

Concerned C-villian said...

I'm NOT reading this entry until after my dentist visit in 2 weeks time. I will post my reaction at that time, but I don't want to "spoil" my always-so-delightful dentist experience. They will do it just fine on their own. Until then, I hope you feel better Terry.