I was attacked by my dentist, and ever since that day, my view of doctors has been tainted.
I had gone with my mom to the dentist. I think I must have been in my early teens. My mom was in another room having her teeth cleaned by a dental hygenist, and I was in a chair being examined by the doctor.
Of course, I have weak teeth, and that usually meant every visit to the dentist was worth a new filling. This trip was no exception, but the doctor told me that it was not a big cavity, just a small one that was easily fixed. Easy, except that the ordeal ended up with me locking myself in the car to get away from him.
This cavity, he said, was so small that I wouldn’t need any novocaine. He would simply use his pick (that’s the silvery pencil-like tool with the sharp hook on the end) to clean out the cavity and then fill it. Hmm, ok. So he started picking, and it hurt - not too much, but still enough to be unpleasant. That’s when he told me that it was bigger than he thought, and he’d have to drill, but still not quite big enough to need novocaine.
Well, that didn’t sit well with me, and I told him that I wanted the novocaine if he was going to be messing around in there any longer. He told me that it was too small for novocaine, and reiterated that he was just going to drill it a little. And so I started to get up out of my chair.
That’s when he grabbed me.
He put one hand on each arm and pushed me into the dentist’s chair. He still had the pick in his left hand, and it scratched my arm. He growled through gritted teeth, “You’re going to sit in that chair.” I was shocked stiff.
It took a moment before I called out to my mom in the other room. Suddenly he realized what he was doing, leapt backwards away from me, and ran out of the room. As soon as he was gone from sight, I bolted for the door, ran to the car, and locked myself inside. My arm had a couple of fine shallow red cuts in it from where the pick tool had sliced me.
My mom had no idea what was going on. When she got out to the car, she seemed mad at me. This was probably more a reaction to her perception of events up to then than what had actually happened. I wasn’t enthusiastic about being at the dentist, but I thought my reaction to what had happened was warranted, not simply a tantrum about having a cavity filled. If there was novocaine, I probably wouldn’t have cared. Holding me down like he did - That’s something that doesn’t leave your memory. (I tried to find a link to the dentist in question, but could only find him in directories. As far as I can tell, he’s still in practice.)
In a separate incident- As a junior in high school I came down with some kind of nose/throat ailment, and visited the doctor. As was the habit with this particular physician, I never actually saw the doctor whose name was etched on the door plate. I always saw some physician’s assistant, someone fresh out of medical school.
The person I saw had obtained a prescription for me for some large pill. I’m not sure what it was. I took them, but they didn’t seem to fix my problems. Days later, I was walking between classes, and found that I was having much more difficulty breathing than I had before the doctor’s visit. In fact, I briefly couldn’t breathe. But this passed.
That evening, I took a cough drop for my sore throat as per the physician’s assistant’s instructions. I was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling or something, when the asphyxiation struck again. I waited a second, thinking it might clear as it did earlier, but it didn’t. I stumbled down the stairs toward my parents’ bedroom, completely unable to breathe. I remember spitting out the cough drop at the bottom of the stairs and watching it rattle around on the hard wood floor in slow-motion.
Finally arriving in my parents’ room, I found I was unable to make noise to draw their attention. I waved my arms frantically, but when they finally noticed they were unable to decipher what was wrong with me.
I collapsed on their bed and vomited. This finally cleared my airway, and I took a deep breath, eyes teared up from choking on myself.
The next day I visited the doctor again, this time seeing the actual doctor for the first time since I started visiting his office. He reviewed my chart, commented that the pills I was taking were completely wrong, and prescribed something different - a single small pill. The next day I was fine.
I mention all of this because Nana (my grandmother) has been sick for the past two or three weeks. Her doctor, who she also never sees, had a physician’s assistant prescribe some anti-allergy medicine for her issues. It turns out she’s got bronchitis, and it seemed pretty serious this morning. Her issues brought these stories back into my mind.
I’m not telling you not to trust your doctor, but do be an informed patient and don’t be afraid to confront them and be noticed when something isn’t working for you.
