Orthodontist Fiasco Gets Fixed
just a heads up, this is gonna get really long
so I’ve always had a problem with my teeth. I have a really bad overbite that pushed apart my two front teeth so wide you could drive a truck through them. It was so bad that I was recommended to get braces as soon as my baby teeth all fell out. So by the time I was 12 I went to an orthodontist that my mom’s friend had spoke well of. The dentist and his staff were pleasant and did their job efficiently. By the time I was 15 (near 16) I got the green light to have my braces removed.
My parents were willing to pay for everything up front. They wanted my teeth to be right. Neither of my parents were able to have much quality work on their teeth when they were my age and they sincerely regretted it. They didn’t want me to be like that.
Anyone who has ever had braces and the subsequent retainers know what’s coming next. The dreaded impressions. Only it wasn’t that bad because the hygienist seemed to understand the basic idea of displacement and just put enough putty in the mold that it was only mildly uncomfortable. During the time that I was getting my retainers set up, the dentist who I had originally started going to was slowly transitioning his practice over to another guy, who we’ll call Dr. Bluff.
Dr. Bluff was very nice and friendly, more so than the original guy. I liked him.
Fast forward about 3 years to now, when I’m 19 and my retainer breaks. It was the bottom one and because of my overbite it threw off the whole system. However, we decided to wait until our next regular dentist appointment to ask what we should do about it. And then we had to push that appointment back because we got sick.
I reasoned that our regular dentist would tell us to just go back to the orthodontist who did the retainer originally and set up an appointment there. We go there (I mean me & my mom since I’m living at home and she’s retired so she can traipse around with me wherever) and as soon as I walk in the office I know in the pit of my stomach something was not going to go right today.
I go back and the hygienist takes a look at my front teeth (which had the gap between them again *SIGH*) and she said 1) she’ll need to take new impressions for my retainer and 2) that Dr. Bluff might want to close the gap before I get my new retainer. I ask her if we should hold off on the impression until after Dr. Bluff has seen it and we make a decision so we don’t waste an impression. She just shrugs and puts the impression tray in my mouth.
Now the thing that should be noted about this particular orthodontist office is that the general treatment area is a big room in the back comprised of five dentists chairs in a semicircle. There is no privacy.
The second she presses the putty against my teeth, it goes down my mouth towards my throat and I start gagging. I’m crying and gagging in the chair and she’s trying to keep me still. After five minutes of hell she finally pulls it out and sends me (and my mouth full of leftover putty bits) over to the communal sink to clean up while i’m embarrassed to hell and blushing like a priest at an orgy.
so i try to mask my light crying and get my mom to come into the back & talk about options on how we’re going to close my front teeth gap. We come up with a solution but it’s going to take two weeks of temporary braces and then another impression for the top. I look at the hygienist, who somehow had the absolute balls to look unfazed.
On the ride home I explain to my mom what happened and she said that she has the same problem re: gag reflex. She said that general dentist work is hell because of it. She tells me to mention it next time. I agreed and added that I would ask the next hygienist to put less putty in the tray so the displaced putty doesn’t trigger my gag reflex. We nod and decide that this is our game plan.
Cut to two weeks later to the day from hell. I had to wake up super early to help my mom take my grandmother to the doctor and after we got that sorted, mom and I went to the orthodontist to get the temp braces taken off and the new impressions done. I wait 30 mins to get called back and then another 15 mins to finally have someone come over and do something. Dr. Bluff takes off the temp braces, grinding the glue off my teeth. Only, as he’s grinding, it’s like he’s oblivious to my very loud grunts of pain. It hurts and it smells and all the debris is either going right up my nose or all over my glasses.
After he’s done I get a reprieve and clean the taste out of my mouth. Back to the chair. I look around and see that they’ve filled all of the other 4 chairs. Oh boy.
So I talk to hygienist that I have a bad gag reflex and I ask her if she could fill the tray not as full because the over-flow/displaced putty/whatever sets off my gag reflex. I joke (but kind of not) that the last thing I wanted to do that morning was throw up on them.
Then Dr. Bluff starts making jokes about previous patients who had puked in the chair. And look, I know that when your job is working in someone’s mouth, puking is going to happen, but at the rate he was mentioning? That’s bad. That’s really bad. That means that there is some fundamentally wrong with what you’re doing.
Impression time! Because I had mentioned gagging and puking they had the tiniest puke bowl known to man under my chin the second the tray went into my mouth. They did this because apparently the hygienist didn’t hear a word I said and filled the tray as full as she could.
The very second she applied pressure to the tray caused the displaced putty to flow out of the tray, down the roof of my mouth, and down my throat. It cut off my fucking air supply. I couldn’t breathe. I was gagging and crying and sobbing and screaming (as well as one can when they can’t breathe). I’m about half a second from blacking out when they finally take the tray out of my mouth- only to have the overflow piece BREAK OFF AND LODGE IN MY THROAT. Cue another five minutes of gagging and crying as they blankly stare at me, trying to figure out what my problem was.
I finally cough it up and they send me over to the sink to clean up. I’m straight up crying and my cheeks are redder than hell and I can feel the other patients’ eyes on me like goddamn bullets in my shoulders. As soon as I can get out of that room I do.
I put on my sunglasses to cover my cry-swollen eyes. The second I walk into the waiting room, my mom knows that something is wrong. I try to hustle the secretaries through making an appointment for the next day to pick up my retainer and I feel like i’m about to die. Mom doesn’t question me because she senses that I Do Not Want To Talk About It Right Here.
So we go down the steps and into the lobby (it’s a second-floor office in a communal building) and before we could even make it to the front door I break down crying. I was fucking hysterical. I was shaking so had my mom couldn’t get a firm grip on me so she could hug me. She makes me take half of a nerve pill which she keeps on her in case of panic/anxiety/nerve attacks. I’m in such a bad state that I can’t drive and I burst into crying fits the entire ride home.
So we get home and the pill’s started to kick in. I’m still really shaken and upset but I’m not literally shaking or sobbing uncontrollably. So I sit and watch some funny videos to calm myself down before I begin to hatch my plan.
I looked up Dr. Bluff and his office on google and on every link on the first two pages of google that had a review function I left a 1-star reviewing detailing my experience. I ended them all by saying that the only reason i would ever go back would be to get my pre-paid retainer and that I was absolutely terrified that I would die in that office.
I sincerely was. I still am.
Anyway. A few hours later, i get a call. IT’S DR. BLUFF AND HE WANTS TO TALK TO ME. He says that he heard that I “didn’t have a good experience today.” He gave a few excuses, tripping over himself to not actually apologize for anything, and then offered to comp the cost of my retainer (which was up to $300 that we paid since we don’t have dental insurance). He only asked that I take down the review (he had only seen one).
But the next day, it got better. We were running like ten minutes late to the appointment and I was freaking the whole time. The second we signed in we got called back. Dr. Bluff invited us into his office and invited us to sit down (we didn’t). He apologized without somehow managing to properly apologize but in the end he comped the cost of my retainer, offer to have a 3D model of my teeth made & shipped to us for future reference FOR FREE, and asked if he could use my review (all versions of which I had since taken down but he had actually saved) for training purposes. I agreed. Mom also made a point of reminding him that he had a lot of younger kids who came through his office and weren’t used to dental work like I was.
To put it in my mother’s words, he was eating crow.
So now, about two weeks later, I’m sitting here with my retainer in my mouth and a dull but persistent ache in my shoulder thanks to the thrashing & gagging that their shitty impression made me do. I actually had to miss a day of work because of the pain. But personally, I think that in end it balanced out.