Journal BarbaraHudson's Journal: Can you steal your own tooth? 11
I'm royally pissed off - again - so I'm just writing this for future reference. Sorry if it rambles a bit
But first a question for you to think about while you read this - who owns your teeth after they've been extracted? This is not a random question.
The dentist's receptionist/mother called, asked me to bring the x-ray, which I did. Of course, the dentist never showed her face even though I was there for almost 2 hours, just to get a referral to a maxillofacial surgeon. I'd be hiding too if I broke someone's upper jaw. Then she made a serious mistake.
She phoned me and once again accused me of stealing MY tooth. How can you steal your own tooth? Beats me. I never signed a release transferring ownership. The procedure was finished, so I took my tooth - with the piece of broken jawbone attached. My dentist claimed it was illegal, but I seriously doubt it. It was on the tray in the kitchen, my sister had come to pick me up (good thing - I was a bit wobbly after being frozen 4 separate times because she wasted time on other stuff. Now she's claiming I "stole it from her lab." Even though there's no sign calling it a lab, no "do not enter", she refers to it as the kitchen in regular conversation, and it has a kitchen counter, cupboards, sink, etc. She even said that her assistant had "contaminated the kitchen with blood from (my) teeth" and everything had to be sterilized. It's a kitchen, dammit!
But of course today the facts have changed. Supposedly, she told me before I left that they needed to keep it. A lie, but if she had asked, I would have said okay, same as when her mother called at 8 pm to ask me to bring it back to be sent out for analysis, I agreed to have it there by 9:15 am the next morning). Her mother also now claims I was told the same thing before I left, but shut up when I said "You weren't even in the room so you don't know what was said.".
Anyway, I invited them - no, I urged them - to call the police on me. "So call the police. Tell them I stole my tooth. I'll be quite happy to tell them what happened"' Of course, they wont. You can't steal what's always been yours.
They tried to use the dental code of ethics against me. Turns out they don't even know the law. The dental code of ethics only applies to the dentist, not the patient. Also, they were shocked to find out that the code of ethics is provincial law, and the order of dentists only has authority to apply it to dentists. Unlike her, I've had cause to read the code of ethics recently, and contrary to her assertion, it says nothing about her owning any teeth that are extracted. Wonder how many gold fillings she squirrels away
She left me a nasty voice mail after I said I'm going to sue. On the voice mail, she used this phrase: "You stole the evidence!" Damn right it's evidence. I'm glad I took MY tooth back, because it's proof of negligence. Calling it "evidence" is a Freudian slip. Examining it and the jawbone it's embedded in, it's obvious she should never have forced in both directions, because she had only cleared part of one side and, near the end. she started alternating leverage (not forceps - a #303 root tip elevator). She said that it was better to cut the gum and drill away some bone than to just pull the tooth out. Well, turns out that using an elevator has the known risk of fracturing the maxillary (upper jaw).(scroll down to #64.2, also quoted below)
64. Danger in the Use of Elevators 1-Loosening or extracting the adjacent teeth. 2-Fracture the alveolar process or fracturing the mandible. 3-Penetrating the maxillary antrum or forcing the root into the antrum. 4-Forcing a root a root of a mandibular molar through lingual plate of the mandible. 5-Damage of soft tissues by slipping of the tip of the elevator. 20/01/14
The elevators work by using the jawbone as a fulcrum or pivot point, which is why applying excess pressure using the mandible as a fulcrum can fracture it. This is a known problem, even on people who don't have soft bones. She can't claim ignorance about my soft bones because she has been complaining on previous visits that I have soft bones (I told her I have osteopenia) - and besides, she knew the bones were more fragile than normal. She was always complaining about how the bone under the point where the fulcrum of the root elevator resting against the jawbone would peel off under pressure. She was negligent in applying excess force on a known fragile mandible.
In other words, she should have done it the old-fashioned way - forceps, instead of applying pressure to the mandible. BTW, it's been 22 days and my neck is still sore. That's a LOT of pressure she applied. Upon encountering too much resistance, she could have removed more bone from around the root as a precaution. How hard can it be to take off more, since it's not that hard anyway, right?
The worst part is she should have sent me to the emergency department of the hospital - they could have removed the tooth from the broken jawbone and re-implanted the broken section, and with a little bit of support to immobilize it, it would have healed on its own. That would have been a lot more constructive than running from the room in a panic and screaming that she broke my jaw and I'm going to need a bone graft and who's going to pay for it? (hint: Pottery Barn rules apply, especially in cases of negligence. You broke it, you pay for it)
Then again, when there's a known elevated risk of fracture even on patients without soft bones. She was negligent to attempt the procedure in the first place.
A fractured mandible is a rare complication of oral surgery in primary care. A simple risk assessment of the factors that might indicate an increased risk should result in a referral to a local specialist. Occasionally an unforeseen fracture can occur, therefore it is good practice to review the socket on each occasion to confirm that there is no sign of a fracture, and when the review is carried out, it should be specifically documented in the records.
She should have informed me of the elevated risk of fracture of the mandible in my case and offered to refer me to a maxillo-facial surgeon, but never did.
What makes it worse was that she was going on, just before the fracture, about how increased pressure (remember, she had had a melt-down after arriving) just brings out the best in her skills. In retrospect, this is her trying to convince herself that she had the skills to do the extraction despite the resistance, and this led her both to ignore the fracture when it happened, and the subsequent strangeness of a tooth not coming out despite floating fairly freely (because the piece of jaw attached to it was no longer attached to the rest of the jaw). The broken bone dragged against the rest of the mandible for a minute to a minute and a half - a quick look-see would have shown the bone that the tooth was embedded in was now moving around, making it obvious the jaw had fractured and to stop trying to pull the broken bone through the soft tissues.
It's going to take half a year to fix this crap. You couldn't pay me to go through it - but I have no choice - and now I don't feel guilty about asking a court to force her to compensate me. I've been called lots of things, but never, ever a thief. So yes, I'm royally pissed off. Both at her dissimulation, and her attempts to place blame on me.
Oh, and she still insists that my bones are soft because I take too much estrogen. Again, I reminded her that I have regular blood tests, and they show the exact opposite. She claims she has special training in endocrinology. She's full of shit, or she'd know that blood tests are definitive.
Everything that happens is always someone else's fault. She's going to learn that if you're always blaming others, the problem is most likely you, not them. Oh, and I have her on billing fraud against the government. And regularly violating patient confidentiality. This will be "interesting times."
Anyway, sorry for the rambling on - I just want to get the facts down immediately, for future reference. As usual
Wow (Score:2)
I'm both infuriated and entertained. Sorry and thank you. And good luck.
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For your "entertainment" - that's a quarter for scale: After all, "pix or it didn't happen". :-)
Rear view [imgur.com]
Front view [imgur.com].
Hey, I get the entertained part. It's like watching a slow-motion train wreck. You know it's going to be terrible, but you've just got to look. We're humans - to a great extent we're motivated to learn by our innate curiosity. How many of us would have taken up programming if we had never been curious of how computers work and whether we could control them?
Oh, and thanks for the good luck wish.
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Jesus!
There's more bone than tooth.
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Good luck (Score:2)
Good luck I hope you do at least as much damage to her as she did to you.
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To me, it's not a question of inflicting damage so much as exposing this behaviour to prevent others from falling into the same trap. Online reviews of her show the same things I've observed: She's abusive of everyone she works with, excessively angry at insurance companies and government, always complaining when a review of her billings results in either the insurer or the government rescinding payments, justifies fraud because of this, and has a huge sense of entitlement (as demonstrated by being royally
Tooth Wisdom (Score:2)
I just want to mention a few statistics about dentists that I find very interesting.
First, around the time of the recession in 2008, while wasting hours online at the California Employment Development Department, there was a compiled list of careers that were in high demand and their average annual income. The number one highest paid career path projected to be in high demand for many moons: Dentist. So, if you love money more than anything else a job may offer, Dentistry is high demand high pay and the s
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The suicide rate of dentists is more than twice the rate of the general population and almost three times higher than that of other white collar workers.
Emotional illness ranks third in order of frequency of health problems amongst dentists, while in the general population it ranks tenth.
Coronary disease and high blood pressure are over 25% more prevalent among dentists than in the general population.
Dentists suffer psycho-neurotic disordersat a rate of 2 1/2 times greater than physicians .
In other words, while your doctor may be at a higher risk of suicide, your dentist is far more likely to be a f*cking whack pack than your doctor or the general population..
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Insurance companies learned they could drop payouts to the point that the co-pay covers the entire cost, and nobody would bitch.
Panoramic x-ray: $600. Co-pay: $120
People on gov't assistance: $55
You can be sure the insurance companies are paying close to the $55 price, so they're making a profit of $45 and not paying anything out. And for people without insurance that covers it, the cost is still $600, so the providers like the imaginary high retail consumer price, while those with insurance like it becau