Needless to say, he has been disciplined:
A dentist who pulled out an elderly woman’s teeth without anaesthetic “to teach her a lesson” has been struck off.David Quelch left the retired nurse, who was 87, with blood pouring from her mouth from two extractions after she had complained to her doctor about the quality of previous treatment by the dentist.
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Something along these lines happened to me when I was a kid.
I stupidly did a running dive into a swimming pool, hit the bottom and broke off the center bottoms of my two top front teeth. My dad called a dentist he knew and arranged for him to see me immediately even though it was a Saturday.
For whatever reason – likely he was pissed with being called out on a weekend to deal with my foolishness – the dentist ground my teeth down to semi-straight line with no pain meds.
The pain was, well, interesting. Once he got into the core of the tooth it was so intense it was like a bright red flare lit up inside my head. Curiously, this actually made it easier to tolerate.
The dentist in question died long
ago (he was in his 70s at the time and this was at last 30 years ago).
Most everyone else cringed when they saw Marathon Man but I wasn’t all that impressed when I saw it.
But was it safe?
Never encountered anything nearly this extreme, but did once have a 4:00 p.m. appt. to have two cavities drilled and filled. Dentist was runnng behind so I didn’t get in the chair until 4:30. He did inject novacaine but wasn’t very patient about waiting for it to take affect. Told him several times that I wasn’t yet feeling much numbness, but he kept wanting to get started. Didn’t get a whole lot of benefit from the anesthetic in that case and learned to schedule appts. early in the day.
I grew up in the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s, and they never used novocaine for routine fillings. For extractions, they used it, but not nearly enough from what I heard – was lucky enough not to need one.
The drills they used were outdated so it took longer too than it does here. I ended up so afraid of dentists that as soon as I left school I stopped going. Then when I was 19 and had my tooth hurt, it took me quite a while to master enough courage to go to a dentist. By that time it was a root canal.
Still, there is a huge difference between not getting novocaine in the Soviet Union in the 60s because clinics didn’t have it or and this guy inflicting pain on purpose. He should be in jail for battery.
“Needless to say” he was disciplined? Doesn’t the medical profession usually protect dirtbags like this against “litigious patients?” His “discipline” ought to involve hard time in jail, but he won’t be charged because he is a medical professional, and thus has a get out of jail free card.
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