Growf

[liralen]

So.

I wrote, too early, the bit about everything being fixed on Thursday. In fact, my teeth and night guard did fine on Thursday night because I'd dosed myself on Motrin before going to sleep, and the two pill dose lasted me pretty well into the morning. And the rest of the day I was careful with stuff.

Friday night, however, I had some stress from work, from Jet being crabby and from a lot of other things and, as is my unconscious wont, I ground my teeth at night. At 2 am I woke up with my entire left side of my jaw in agony. The filled teeth, their neighboring teeth were all throbbing and trying to burn their way out of my jaw. My jaw was totally locked up, and Jet needed feeding.

So I fed Jet, got him back asleep into his bed, and then went and cried on John. Saturday morning, I paged the dentists, they tried to argue me into waiting until Monday, and then Chris decided to come in and try again with the adjustment. This time he actually used contact paper, and tried some stuff on the inside of the guard to see where there as actual contact instead of just asking me how it felt.

I feel stupid, now. I feel like I should have known, when I was still numbed up, that 'How does this feel?' is an utterly asinine question, and that that alone should have proved their incompetency, but then I went for the second adjustment and went with a 'how does this feel?' AGAIN with the tooth guard, and only when I was in agony was I able to get the self-confidence? assertiveness? to ask for it to be done right. And it still wasn't done right, or something, as my teeth are still aching today.

The problem is, in part, that my brain tells me, "Well you *said* that it felt okay, so it's your fault, isn't it?" And that always makes me just want to cry.

And there's a really nasty part of my brain going, "He *knew* that one of those filling was deep, and that if the nerve stayed inflamed after the filling that I'd have to have a root canal done and he deliberately didn't do the bite adjustment and the guard adjustment correctly so that he'd *GET* a root canal patient in a week."

Never attribute to evil what can be attributed to simple, blind, frustrating, agonizing stupidity.

Then again. I'm never going back to them. I'm going to a different dentist this afternoon to see what's up, if the guard can be fixed, if the nerve ringing might go away. If I need a root canal, I'm going with him, not the Macri Family Dentists, and they aren't going to get another dollar from me, ever again. I don't have to pay someone that's stupid to work on me.

In many ways, the things that eyelessgame and silkiemom are going through at the moment really resonate. But at least I can go somewhere and get it fixed.

It also helps that the new dentist takes Aetna direct, the Macri place made us pay first, and they'd bill the insurance, but the payments would then be mailed from the insurance folks to us.

Comments

[silkiemom.livejournal.com]

Wah! That sounds terrible! You have all my sympathy. But my problem is different from yours. I have no real problems with the medical care I was given, but the billing nightmares and stress keep going on and on and on. And when I think I've gotten rid of the problem, it pops back up like a new hydra head. I hope you work everything out. Hugs!

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

They're professionals. They're the /doctor/. You're supposed to be able to trust them to know what they're doing. That is why it's so easy to take the blame onto yourself. I mean, someone who has given you a shot of novacaine should know that the question 'how does that feel' is completely useless. :P

What you're going through sounds an awful lot like I went through with my first few fillings. I went to the dentist because I was having a very mild pain, then spent the two weeks following the 'fixing' with extreme pain before it occurred to the woman doing my fillings that 'oh, possibly they need to be smoothed out'.

The actual dentist herself was amazingly good when she did my fillings, but the other, secondary woman, who did my first few fillings, wasn't anywhere near her level. :P

[liralen.livejournal.com]

True. The actual problem is very different. It's the level of frustration that seemed to resonate on the same level.

thanks for the hugs! I hope your hydra gets whacked.

hugs,
Liralen

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Exactly that. It's just really painful and sad and depressing when I'm in constant pain. Hard to do things and hard to take care of Jet and be patient.

Anyway... yeah. I trusted their abilities and they definitely failed me. Ah well. At least I can just move on to someone else.