Dentists Share the Most Horrifying Things They’ve Ever Seen at Work - AskReddit

warning this content may be upsetting or disturbing to some audiences a two centimeters wide hole in her cheek due to an infection that was the result of an untreated cavity dentists what are some of your worst cases i had a preteen patient who needed everything removed and replaced with dentures her teeth were so rotten that she had mold she had a disease where her teeth rotted from her gums by 16 she had a full set of dentures due to being a low income family her dental hygiene wasn't the best dentist here i'm sure i have seen and pulled thousands upon thousands of rotten teeth and have worked on some outrageously infected mouths things that would make a non-dentite gag but that type of stuff doesn't get to me a bit anymore i feel bad when patients are embarrassed about their mouths because it literally doesn't faze me at all i've seen worse probably in the same day the number one thing that bothers me the most are people who just reek of cigarette smoke i'm not talking about the person who just had a cig on the way to the office i mean the people who have that god awful smoke smell emanating out of every pore and every article of clothes we keep a tub of vicks vaporub to rub on the inside of our masks for these types of people a 19 year old girl came in with general mouth pain and after the initial exam my boss the dentist asked me to do an fmx full mouth x-rays that's 18 x-rays showing every tooth from multiple angles i was in the dark room putting them in the x-ray mount when i noticed they were covered in dark shadows my initial thought was this looks like the mouth of a meth addict i was right every tooth in her head was rotten there's a chemical in meth which causes enamel to erode so no matter how much you brush your teeth it won't help don't do meth so not worth losing all your teeth for i'm a doctor and i went to see a patient in hospital as i had looked at his bloods and they were a bit off it was night time the curtains were around his bed i walked into the room i pulled the curtains back the guy was sitting on his bed which was covered in blood there was this thick mixture of saliva and blood slowly drooling from his mouth down his gown on his bed i could see these little yellow things teeth they were his teeth he was sitting there in the dark at 3am pulling out his own teeth i've no idea how he was doing it as there was no instruments to hand that could be used the guy wouldn't tell me so yep don't send your kids to medical school i've cleaned pubic hairs out from between a patient's teeth twice i've cleaned teeth with so much plaque and calculus you literally couldn't even see the teeth then there's the pact in rotting food even with all this i still love my job iron stomach dentist here the stuff i have seen have left me unphased to anything now my mom always asks me how do your venue feel comfortable peering into and touching other people's mouths and i keep telling her you have no idea about the horrors i have seen from maggot infested lesions to pus dripping from fistulas it's a crazy ride the smoking bit really grinds my gears as a ex-smoker i get it when people just have to have a smoke but to come for a dental visit after it is downright rude especially after i have advised you to try to quit for the betterment of your oral hygiene the least you can do is act like you care my partner used to be a dental therapist and worked in schools he remembered this one little girl who opened her mouth and each tooth was surrounded and full of naughty pieces of her black hair just everywhere masses of it with gunk too he can't forget the horror from seeing and cleaning it all out i just imagine it to be like cleaning the shower drain lull long ago in the days of your 1970s my mama worked as a dental assistant and she remembers patients coming in and having to have every last tooth pulled out of their head because all their teeth were rotten and broken off i beg my friends to make dentist visits a priority i know it's expensive and i know it's scary but what might be a 500 today will be a 20 000 problem a few years down the road if untreated get it done today future you will thank you for it nothing really gets to me anymore in private practice but after dental school i did a dental residency at a level one trauma hospital in new york city where most of my best stories come from rivers of pus from draining abscesses were pretty routine at the hospital as were unbelievable levels of gum disease certain kinds of gum disease you can smell a mile away the saddest stories were the little toddlers who needed extractions due to their parents absolute cluelessness some of the parents didn't even seem neglectful just had no idea how cavities developed or that baby teeth actually required care aren't new teeth just going to grow in any ways grossest personal story sometimes a tooth with a big cavity and it will grow granulation tissue which is pink like gum tissue more common in kids but occasionally you'll see it in adults one time we had an adult patient who had a tooth with granulation tissue that looked exactly like a worm crawling out of his tooth i have an insane phobia of worms so that was horrifying for me i think this was the only time i've ever had to excuse myself from the room i graduated from a dental school in a third world country and it was one of those hospitals that was supported by the government so that meant almost free treatment without insurance so we were flocked by all sorts of people with questionable oral hygiene so this guy walks up complaining of a swelling at his jaw didn't complain of pain all that much but with an obvious swelling at the angle of the jaw externally we could make out he was a homeless person most probably an addict who used to be on the streets near the hospital looking for syringes so he is made to open his mouth cause he can't do it by himself and we see floating in his mouth and infesting his gums white squiggly things they turned out to be maggots which have eaten away into his putrifying and the crossing wound on the inside of his cheek and gums i'm a sanitation technician in a dentist's office but i often stop by some of the rooms to learn about the procedures or to help the dentists and assistants one day these two half-asian siblings come in about 40 years old the brother was an ass and very negligent of his sister who is mentally [ __ ] she can never brush her teeth on her own and this guy can't even bother to help eventually all of her teeth died and were rotting inside of her mouth for what seems to have been a very long time we had to extract everything from her mouth by the end of the procedure there were at least eight teeth on the surgical tray that were completely black and smelled of little poop i had to throw the teeth into the biohazard bin and every time i open it i just get a whiff of her teeth i had a 21 year old kid that came in he had a history of drug abuse crystal meth and gross decay on all of his teeth nothing could be saved i extracted 24 teeth on him over four visits and gave him a set of dentures dentures are far from ideal when it comes to replacing teeth nonetheless it definitely improved the quality of his life he was able to chew speak and smile again when i was in nursing school we did in our first rotation at a nursing home to learn the basics of patient care it was our first semester so we were just responsible for getting patients up out of bed dressed and ready for the day my patient had slept with his dentures in he was a bit hesitant to take them out and let me clean them as he didn't want to be a bother they were disgusting the inside that was up against his gums was caked with half an inch of brown rotten food this man had had a stroke and was dependent on the staff to do this for him and they hadn't i don't think anyone had taken them out and properly cleaned his mouth and dentures since he'd been there not a hygienist yet but i do assist a dentist in the military this gentleman came in for a yearly checkup and we had to refuse him the checkup because we couldn't do a proper exam without getting a cleaning first his teeth were more plaque than teeth a lot were missing and he had significant bone loss i really wanted to help him realize the gravity of his situation but he didn't care enough to heed any advice we gave him unfortunately this is all too common i'm a dental hygienist recently had a patient with very poor oral hygiene and diabetes along with other medical conditions i was polishing his teeth and knocked an implant out not a crown an implant that is drilled into your bone a co-worker was cleaning a patient with alzheimer's she told him to open and he closed every time she said open he would bite harder luckily an assistant unlocked his jaw the hygienist was okay he did break her skin but no major damage assistant here a few weeks ago i was taking impressions of an older woman's rotten teeth had to hold my hand on the tray in her mouth for nine minutes while the mixture set she licked my fingers for nine minutes straight and stared at me the entire time while i looked off in the distance trying to think about something else it was horrifying hygienist here i had a patient once who was a vietnam vet in a wheelchair with limited use of his legs he also has several other physical and mental health complications including ptsd he was apologizing for having just eaten a sandwich but in all honesty i don't think he ever brushed his teeth not unheard of for people with debilitating mental illnesses there were layers of plaque so thick i had to use a toothbrush for about 15 minutes before my instruments could really do anything useful he had six teeth left and said he just wanted them all ripped out he began telling me that he was considering taking his life the night before he started to cry and i tried to calm and soothe him we were in a hospital setting and as i helped him as he was leaving a nurse came by and told me not to let him scan me something he apparently did all the time it was a very emotional and overwhelming experience overall not me but a friend of mine worked reception at a university at their dentistry clinic the procedures were offered at discounted price and the clientele could be pretty special one guy came in complaining of pain after getting dentures about a year before patient goes in five minutes later she hears a yelp and and hygienist comes running out of a room into the bathroom wretching the guy had never taken his dentures out to even clean them because he didn't know you had to guy has terrible infection and there was white worms in there she changed jobs a few months later i'm a dentist i was once doing an initial exam for a 14 year old girl it appeared to be a very straightforward appointment healthy happy-looking girl with no problems on her normal x-rays i decided that she was due for a panoramic whole face x-ray but didn't expect to see anything i saw a huge basically the whole half of her lower jaw lesion and her mandible my first thought was that she would likely have to have half her jaw removed if not worse i made the referral to an oral surgeon immediately and had the talk with her and her parents about the potential scary things i found out that shortly after that appointment she informed her mother that the stepfather had been mistreated her for years i can tell you about the difference males for instance that horrible smell when the doctor uses the handpiece to drill the tooth you're basically just smelling a burning tooth also when you open the biohazard bag to throw away dead teeth that slight whiff of decay is enough to bring you to your knees and rubber base rubber base is just the worst i can't even bear to smell it while in the same room i have no idea how patients can stand having that in their mouths for seven minutes i'm a dental assistant a couple of years ago a lady in her 60s came to her first dental visit she was in pain so i took a couple of x-rays on the concerned area she said her lower teeth are hurting her upon taking x-rays i realized she was partially missing two lower front teeth it was calculus build up from 60 years to make things worse the stench was awful and she had a ton of perfume on we had to double mask to be in the same room after cleaning she starts yelling at us she thought we pulled her teeth out but in reality her two front teeth were only root tips which she got pulled out after a couple of weeks later another story two years ago on a hot summer day the ac broke down and the office was super hot a patient came for his regular checkup this particular patient is from east asia and he had a very strong body odor mixed with his ethnic food smell additionally his mouth breath was on another level while waiting for the dentist he stretches his arms for 20 to 30 minutes every time he raises his arms we can see his ripped shirt from the armpit area the horror of armpit hair and body odor was unbearable i end up throwing up dental assistant checking in a couple of months back we had a patient come in telling us about how much he loved his new floss sticks and how he'd been brushing twice a day etc etc just a general scale and clean so the dentist has the ultrasonic scaler and we're doing the rounds and we come to this massive food pack so food has started packing between two teeth and had caused a cavity pretty typical but as she went in to start clearing this food pack it became apparent that the hole was a lot bigger than we thought and was completely full of broccoli you know the tiny little flowery heads full of that and it smelled exactly as you'd imagine broccoli doesn't have the best smell in general but when it's been rotting in someone's mouth for the past god knows how long it's gag-worthy another patient we had hadn't seen the dentist in several years we see it constantly he was a smoker and had the worst calculus build up i've seen subgingivally the calculus was black and smelled just like stale cigarettes you know the smell of a damp ashtray that's been left outside yeah he had advanced periodontal disease and his lower anteriors were so loose the dentist was worried about them falling out during the clean looking at dentures in his 20s brush and floss kids not my story but my sisters she went to tanzania for a six-month exchange during her last year at dental school she has loads of horror stories tanzania like a lot of poor countries has a lot of problems with proper health care she worked at a private dental clinic and a public one the private was pretty okay but the public one was just bad first of all the hygiene it's kind of hard to find any in some places the local dentists don't use gloves because they don't have any they used her sometimes they don't have fancy machines to clean the tools so they throw all the used stuff in a bucket of bleach second people don't go until it's almost too late because they don't have any money my sister had seen multiple worst-case scenarios that could have been easily avoided if they had gone way sooner for instance one patient got a two centimeters wide hole in her cheek due to an infection that was the result of an untreated cavity this was unfortunately a common occurrence she also came across a patient who died an hour later as a result of multiple mouth infections right now she is back in the netherlands working full time and her horror cases are mostly the kids who are obviously neglected and have extremely bad teeth as a result she comes across patients not even six years old with nine cavities she had reported a couple of parents at social services to check on the kids thanks for listening to radio tts hit the subscribe button and activate the notification bell for a free dentist visit click the right box for the doctors playlist let us know in the comments what you think about these stories

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Id: Mcy40BW00qg

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020