Some Bottom Tenthers Are Dentists (#4)

Some Dentists are Bottom Tenthers, too

I suppose this could have gone on my Vietnam Blog, as easily as here, but it deals with a pair of scoundrels that, were they civilians, I would have called doctor and then sued.  But they were Army dentists so I had to call them “sir.”  Young punks really, my age or even younger (I was 27 when I got out of the Army).  My best guess is that the two of them had failed their dental boards and had no place they could legally practice except in the military.

Back to the beginning:  I was ETSing (to those of you who never ETSed, that’s a military acronym standing for Estimated Time Service…or you can leave the EFFing Army now.  Before doing so, you had to go through a checklist of getting out stuff.  After this, I will have written about two of them.  The first of these is on my Vietnam blog and deals with my successful attempt not to have to pay for a gas mask I had never been issued.  The second, well, that’s this one.

ETS

Aside from the gas mask situation, ETSing went well until I had to get the dentists to sign off on the statement that my teeth were fine.  They wanted to take out two of my wisdom teeth.  I was a bit hesitant but I did want to ETS and I would have no dental insurance when I started back to Grad. School at UT-Austin.  So, I let them.  Big mistake!  I should have learned from my friend Don Mohr.  He had gone through the Medical check-out the week before (the gas mask thing slowed me down a week) and they had called the company on the previous Friday to leave him a message:  “Specialist Mohr has a spot on his right lung and should be sent back to the base hospital on Monday (the same day I was seeing Lieutenant/Drs. Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.  Quick note:  Don was fine, just a spot on the X-Ray, not on the lung itself.

My dentists (and I apologize to fraternity members everywhere) looked like what I used to call “frat rats”:  take them out of the uniforms and put them in Tommy Hilfiger clothes and they would have been just soooo preppie!!!  I have no idea why two dentists, instead of one with an assistant, were going to extract my wisdom teeth.  I suppose that was to make them was to make them twice as dumb:  they fed off each other.  A qualified dental tech would have stopped the insanity much earlier.

Here’s What Happened

In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien says you can always tell a real war story:  they all begin “This is no shit.”  Well, this is no shit.  To start with, two dentists are twice as likely to screw up as one.  Together, they make something like a screw in the light bulb joke.  My two were the dumbest two in the whole military chandelier.

10 a.m.:  I sit down in the chair.  Dr. Dumb gives me Novocain in both sides of my mouth (evidently thinking they could both work on different teeth at the same time or that the procedure would be quick and easy).

10:30 a.m.  The dentists (one or the other) cut down to reach the right upper wisdom tooth.  They mouth various platitudes about how well the whole thing is going.  One of them starts to tug on the tooth with something like a specialty pair of pliers.  He stops after a while and allows the other one have a go at it.

10:45 a.m.  They retreat on wisdom tooth #1 and turn to the second tooth.  Same thing:  they tug and they tug, but the tooth wins.

11 a.m.  They huddle and then tell me they’re going to cut a little deeper into the gum line and return to tooth 1.  I had not realized that dentist’s need big muscles in their arms, but with all the tugging they had been doing, the left me alone for a minute and retreated for coffee and, possibly, a donut.  I consider making a break for it, but they return before I can.

11:30 a.m.  This has become another episode of military penis wars.  They don’t know what they’re doing and will NOT ask for help.  They continue to pull at the tooth; the tooth continues to refuse to move.

12:  It is noon o’clock and I continue to retain two (2) wisdom teeth that should have left an hour or two ago.  The idiots continue to display their inability to function well.  I suspect they are in the Tea Party these days or won Darwin Awards by trying to extract their own wisdom teeth.  They work through the lunch hour: dedicated buffoons.

12:30  I am not feeling, well, pain exactly, just a strange kind of pressure building up in my mouth.  I think they have tugged so much that the sheer pressure if getting to my mouth.  They assume I need more Novocain.  I feel like the guy in Green Day who sings "Give Me Novocain"!!!

1:30   A wandering dentist, a major, walks by the room and then turns back.  He is curious about why the same patient he saw this morning at 9 a.m., checking into the dental office, continues to be here.  Dumb and Dumber explain that my wisdom teeth are not cooperating.  “Let me see the X-rays,” the major says.  “We don’t have any,” they respond.  “GET SOME!!!!” the major shouts.  They do.

2 p.m.  The major looks at the X-ray.  The roots of both of my wisdom teeth are like two-pronged fish hooks, pointing different direction and curving kind of upwards.  The major send the little boy dentists away, saws each wisdom tooth in half and extracts each half individually.

2:30  I finally get out of the dental chair.  I pass out.

Bad dentists are everywhere—as are bad doctors.  In civilian life, we can find out which doctors may manage not to kill us or damage us worse than the original thing they set out to cure.  Do so!

My two dentists offer to do all sorts of gratis work, cosmetic, on my mouth.  I glare at them and leave.