Sad Little Teeth
Aug. 20th, 2006 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharplittleteethAngelica woke up yesterday looking like a chipmunk.
She'd had a toothache the night before. When she woke up, half her face had swollen.
There followed some panic. I had no idea where to get emergency dental care on a Saturday. The Dental Health Services Victoria website suggested the Royal Dental Hospital.
I call them. They say it will be a five hour wait, and that they'll charge us lots of money because A. doesn't have a healthcare card.
Fine. Whatever. A. needs treatment, and money isn't a deciding issue. We make the journey in to Swanston Street, take a ticket, and wait for triage to call our number out.
And wait. For an hour.
Presumably this is part of the triage process: if you couldn't survive that first hour, no dentist on Earth could have saved you.
(That's where the word triage comes from, right? Splitting patients into those that will live regardless of treatment, those that will die regardless of treatment, and those that will only survive if treated.
Not exactly cheerful categories for a trip to the dentist.)
Eventually they call out our number. We've lost the ticket. They take down A.'s details anyway, and we are now on the Official Waiting List.
Which means we get to wait. And wait. And wait.
To be fair, we're Johnny-Come-Latelys compared to the poor people who have been waiting there since 9:30am. They pass the time by watching the telly, skivving off downstairs for a smoke, or being taught how to weave those little wristbands by a chatty old lady who's there to keep her friend company.
I pass the time fetching coffee for my sweetie, and talking to her in soothing tones. She doesn't like dentists. She really doesn't like dentists.
Five o'clock rolls around. A young dentistry student in a hajib calls out A.'s name. I give her a kiss as she heads off into the dentist's room. It's almost over, I think to myself.
Forty five minutes pass.
And then A. emerges, teary-eyed and cheek swollen, unable to talk because of the anaesthetic and gauze in her mouth.
They took out four teeth, she mumbles.
She says the dentist gave her a choice. She cold just be given antibiotics today, and then she'd have to come back on Monday or Tuesday to have the teeth pulled. Or she could have it all done then. A. bravely chose to have it all done then.
We pay ($380, all up), and I get my sweetheart home. Where I feed her soup and icecream and painkillers.
It will be three days before the swelling goes down. You can see a photo here. But what's really upsetting A. is that she didn't get to keep the extracted teeth.
Either the public health system is cutting black market deals with the Tooth Fairy.
Or they're using patient's genetic material to create an army of cloned chipmunk supersoldiers.
She'd had a toothache the night before. When she woke up, half her face had swollen.
There followed some panic. I had no idea where to get emergency dental care on a Saturday. The Dental Health Services Victoria website suggested the Royal Dental Hospital.
I call them. They say it will be a five hour wait, and that they'll charge us lots of money because A. doesn't have a healthcare card.
Fine. Whatever. A. needs treatment, and money isn't a deciding issue. We make the journey in to Swanston Street, take a ticket, and wait for triage to call our number out.
And wait. For an hour.
Presumably this is part of the triage process: if you couldn't survive that first hour, no dentist on Earth could have saved you.
(That's where the word triage comes from, right? Splitting patients into those that will live regardless of treatment, those that will die regardless of treatment, and those that will only survive if treated.
Not exactly cheerful categories for a trip to the dentist.)
Eventually they call out our number. We've lost the ticket. They take down A.'s details anyway, and we are now on the Official Waiting List.
Which means we get to wait. And wait. And wait.
To be fair, we're Johnny-Come-Latelys compared to the poor people who have been waiting there since 9:30am. They pass the time by watching the telly, skivving off downstairs for a smoke, or being taught how to weave those little wristbands by a chatty old lady who's there to keep her friend company.
I pass the time fetching coffee for my sweetie, and talking to her in soothing tones. She doesn't like dentists. She really doesn't like dentists.
Five o'clock rolls around. A young dentistry student in a hajib calls out A.'s name. I give her a kiss as she heads off into the dentist's room. It's almost over, I think to myself.
Forty five minutes pass.
And then A. emerges, teary-eyed and cheek swollen, unable to talk because of the anaesthetic and gauze in her mouth.
They took out four teeth, she mumbles.
She says the dentist gave her a choice. She cold just be given antibiotics today, and then she'd have to come back on Monday or Tuesday to have the teeth pulled. Or she could have it all done then. A. bravely chose to have it all done then.
We pay ($380, all up), and I get my sweetheart home. Where I feed her soup and icecream and painkillers.
It will be three days before the swelling goes down. You can see a photo here. But what's really upsetting A. is that she didn't get to keep the extracted teeth.
Either the public health system is cutting black market deals with the Tooth Fairy.
Or they're using patient's genetic material to create an army of cloned chipmunk supersoldiers.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 08:08 am (UTC)Will you wish her all the best from me?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 08:54 am (UTC)Many sympathies to Angelica and I hope she's feeling better soon.
However..this is the Australian government we're talking about here..
They're desperately trying to hock the teeth to some third world country most likely :)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 02:32 pm (UTC)it doesn't help that D points and laughs at my chipmunk face :P
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 03:50 pm (UTC)*mutter*
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 12:52 pm (UTC)I've heard tell of mouthes swelling up like that, but I never quite believed them.
And how does one go from a toothache to a four-tooth extraction job?
You must have wanted to die.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 02:27 pm (UTC)