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Thursday, March 15: The last thing anyone wants to have done in a foreign country is any kind of surgery. For people (like me) who especially dread dental work, the worst of all conceivable worlds is having oral surgery in a foreign land.
Rewind to last summer, July to be exact. Pain in the back of my mouth led to the discovery of a crack in the bottom left molar. The tooth already had a root canal in it, so once it cracked there was nothing to do but pull it. So in July, I had the tooth extracted by an oral surgeon in Virginia. There was a lot of swelling and discomfort after, but I suppose it went as well as such a thing can go. I healed and a couple of months later, I was on the plane to Oman.
Just last week, I started having pain at the spot of that earlier extraction. It felt like something sharp was poking at my bottom left gum, from inside out. The gum area was inflamed and was quite painful. I am always the kind of person who avoids going to the dentist as long as conceivably possible, but I could feel that sharp protrusion in my gum and I knew I better get it checked. So, on the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I went on Wednesday evening to the Badr Al Samaa Polyclinic in Firq, near Nizwa, which is like a medical professional building you would find in the USA. This clinic has every kind of doctor imaginable inside. The dentist here inspected my mouth like he would a horse and told me that the bone under the area of that extraction had splintered and was in fact poking at my gum from the inside. He said I would need to go to the clinic’s Muscat office and see Dr. Vidya Shetty, who would cut a flap in my gum and then FILE DOWN THE BONE so it would no longer protrude through my gum!! YIKES!
Now, this was NOT news I wanted to hear. As you can imagine! Being in Oman means I don’t have my regular cast of characters to choose from; everyone is a stranger here! I have no idea of the credentials of some of these people. Most of the medical professionals I’ve seen in Oman have been of Indian descent; I’m also met a couple of Egyptian doctors. The dentist at the Firq clinic was Indian and so was his recommended Dr. Vidya. I know we do have Indian medical professionals in the US, so I guess they must have good credentials, right?? RIGHT??
I tried numerous times to call the clinic in Muscat on Wednesday evening to make an appointment for Thursday, but after about 10 attempts with a busy signal every time, I finally gave up and determined I would just go to Muscat after my morning walk on Thursday. On Thursday morning I was finally able to connect by phone and they told me Dr. Vidya would be in until noon and then she’d be back again from 5:00-8:00. These are normal working hours for almost everyone in Oman except, it seems, teachers. I was told she didn’t take appointments; she sees patients on a first come, first served basis. That seemed weird to me for a surgical procedure! Though I was cutting it close with the time, I got in the car and headed as quickly as I could to the Badr Al Samaa Clinic in Al Khuwair in Muscat, about a 1 1/2 hour drive.
I arrived at the clinic at about 11:35, which I knew was cutting it close for the dental surgeon’s departure at noon. There was a long queue of people checking in at reception on the lower level, but I didn’t want to waste my time in line if the doctor was actually leaving at noon. So I bypassed the line and went in search of the doctor, who I found on the middle level. Her assistant told me the doctor actually was to leave at 1:00, so I rushed back downstairs to check in with reception and get a waiting ticket. I got #10 for room 17.
Up in the waiting area outside the doctor’s room, I waited and waited as I saw whole Indian families disappear through Dr. Vidya’s door. I was thinking there was no way I was going to have this procedure done by the time the doctor left! I hoped that once you had a ticket in hand the doctor HAD to see you, but I didn’t know for sure. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was actually only an hour, my #10 flashed on the door and I was inside.
I showed the dentist the problem and she affirmed she would have to cut a flap into the gum and file the bone. But, she said, you will have to make an appointment!! I said, “They told me they didn’t make appointments! I just drove all the way from Nizwa and I’ve been waiting an hour! I don’t live in Muscat!” She could tell I was agitated; she asked me please to calm down, that she’d go ahead and do the procedure. But first, she had to inform me there was some chance that my nerves on one side of my tongue might be cut accidentally, and I might feel a numbness in my tongue. “It’s temporary for sure,” she assured me, “maybe 4-6 weeks at the most.” She told me I would need to sign a consent form because of this risk. Though she never gave me the form to sign, she proceeded with the surgery.
She shot me up with Novocaine and then got out the tools of her trade. I cannot even bear to look at these tools, so I closed my eyes and braced myself for whatever would come. She dove in to my mouth with her scalpel and I could feel the pressure of the cut, but no pain. My body was clenched so tightly that I thought I might turn to stone. Dr. Vidya and her nurse were soon digging into my mouth with force and pressure. After what felt like a huge struggle inside my mouth, I could feel and hear something that resembled two loggers each holding the end of a saw and pulling the saw back and forth across a tree. The sound is like something you’d hear in the horror film Saw. I still felt a lot of pressure but no pain, thank goodness! The doctor kept pressing on my lower jaw saying, “Open, open!” All of this went on for what seems like another eternity but in fact was probably about a half hour. Then, sweet blessed relief, it was over.
At that point the doctor had me sign the consent form she spoke of earlier. Now that the procedure was done, couldn’t I refuse to sign the consent form? It seemed pretty backwards. But I’m not one of those lawsuit-happy people and I went ahead and signed on the dotted line. This after she told me I shouldn’t have any problem with my tongue as she was very careful to protect it.
Dr. Vidya then sent me downstairs to get two injections. I did just that, and then the nurses downstairs hooked me up to the slowest saline IV drip I’ve ever been hooked to. I kept watching the bag but it seemed the saline level never moved. Like a watched pot never boils, a watched saline bag never empties. I laid there at least an hour with a needle in my hand and that interminable saline d-r-i-p, d-r-i-p, d-r-i-p, d-r-i-p.
Next door at the pharmacy, the pharmacist gave me some Augmentin and some pain-killer for 20 freakin’ Omani rials. Between that and the procedure and injections, the whole ordeal cost me 85 rials, or about $221. This was definitely not in my budget for this month and left the balance in my account frightfully low.
The best laid plans of mice and men… 😦
Haha.. definitely a hilarous way to look at it from the other side of the ‘Chair’!!
Haha, I didn’t even think of it from the dentist’s point of view! I’m sure you have plenty of your own stories to tell from your side of the “chair”!! Are any of your patients nervous around you? I always actually trusted my dentist in the US because I’ve been going to him for years. I’m sure your patients have the same level of trust in you! It’s not knowing someone that makes it so scary… 🙂
I do and I keep them to myself 😉 I agree.. Nervousness stems from not knowing what is going to happen you and in today’s information driven age there’s nothing hidden from Google.. !! All the same.. it is the Doctor’s responsibility to explain the entire procedure, its steps and possible moments of discomfort so that you already know what to expect…
Trust is something that builds over time and I prefer it that way too.. its better to trust after the experience rather than trust too soon only to be left disappointed later.
P.S : Seeing patients on a first-come-first-serve basis is too much unnecessary anxiety for everyone !
Hope you have healed and are pain free. Take care 🙂
Wow, what an ordeal–seems so primitive, like a walk-in shack in Mexico! So, how’s your gum and tongue now? Have you since found a proper dentist that takes appointments and explains procedures before-hand, has you sign paperwork before the procedure? You are one brave cookie…
I now have the name and number of a proper dentist in Muscat. I honestly don’t think my problem is resolved and so I see another visit in my future… 😦 I hate going to the dentist!!
As an oral surgeon this is a relatively common occurrence. In most cases the splintering bone will work its way out spontaneously. In fact, I usually give the patient the option to wait it out a couple of weeks or go ahead and open the site and smooth it out. If the bone is not traumatizing the side of the tongue and there is minimal pain then most opt to give it a chance. Most of the time it softens and you can literally pluck it right out with a pair of tweezers. Some patients are prone to recurrence even after surgery to smooth the area, you may fall into this category. If you are so inclined, you may want to wait it out (if tolerable), just keep the area clean with an antimicrobial mouth rinse (chlorhexidine rinse if available there) if not, listerine should work fine. Good luck!
Thank you for the information Ricoms! After I had the surgery, I was still in pain for some time and at one point I felt two sharp protrusions through my gum. My friend Kathy looked in my mouth and said she saw two “baby teeth!!” I scheduled another surgery with another dentist, but within a week, I was playing around with one of the protrusions and it broke off! The other one just seemed to self-correct, because all of a sudden there was no longer any protrusion. Very bizarre! What you said actually happened. And definitely, I found Listerine to be a help! Thanks so much for your advice!
Oh, you poor thing, Cathy. I just can’t imagine what this must have been like. 😦 I hope everything is okay by now.
Thanks so much, Sylvia, but this is a really old post. I wonder how you happened upon it!!?? I’m fine by now; I think this happened in early 2012. But thanks so much for your good wishes. 🙂
I’m not sure how it popped up on my screen. Sorry to bring back painful memories. 😯
Haha, well, don’t worry! I’ve long forgotten this incident, on purpose! 🙂