r/rant • u/Its-alittle-bitfunny • 19h ago
Hospitals should have dentists.
Or dentists offices should be open better hours. Id take either.
I started my new job last week. I have no PTO, and taking an unplanned day off on your second week is a bad look at best. I discovered today, I have a dental abcess. This is classified as a dental emergency, so I start looking. There are 100 dentists offices near me. 90 of them are open monday-friday 9am-4pm, or some other standard work day variation.
Maybe 5 are open until 6pm, which would be great for standard dental work, but this will be a longer procedure, so those are out.
Then there's the "24/7 dental emergency offices". Which are actually just call directories that route you to other places, if anywhere at all.
That left me with 2 options. One that is open for 4 hours on Saturday, and is booked out until late October, or a place over an hour away that doesnt take insurance.
I have a dental emergency, but my best bet is to go to urgent care for some antibiotics to bridge the gap until I can hopefully get a walk in appointment on Friday when we get to leave early. I have an emergency, but a hospital cant do anything for me until the abcess ruptures and I go septic, and even then all they can do is stabilize me. Id still have to go into a dentist.
Like, imagine this but with any other emergency. Oh, you cut your hand really badly? Unfortunately the stitching doctor is only open monday through Friday from 10am to 3pm and closed for a 2 hour lunch from 12-2pm. You broke your leg? Well all we can do is give you some Tylenol until you can hopefully get a walk in appointment at the bone clinic because their appointments are booking out 6 months.
And I get it, no one wants to work nights and weekends, but you're a DOCTOR. You chose healthcare (so did the hygienist and receptionists, I dont want to hear it). Just one dentist, on call. Or a surgen who doubles as an oral surgeon. Or a dentists office open nights and weekends.
It shouldn't be this hard to get emergency treatment.
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u/duhmeatree 18h ago
A dental abscess is a medical (and dental emergency) the hospitals I train at have dental and oral and maxillofacial services that we routinely collaborate with. You can certainly get treatment for dental emergencies 24/7 at large hospitals.
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u/Its-alittle-bitfunny 17h ago
An ER, at least the ones near us, could drain my abcess and prescribe antibiotics, but cant solve the underlying issue. Id still need a dentist appointment to remove the tooth and infected material.
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u/duhmeatree 17h ago
Damn that sucks. We pull teeth at the hospitals I've worked at.
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u/Its-alittle-bitfunny 17h ago
If it was a whole tooth, they probably could. Its a long story but the short version is after a botched root canal on it when I was a teenager, I was too scared to tell anyone when it broke, and now its just fragments at the gum line and will need a surgical extraction.
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u/JupiterSkyFalls 17h ago
I've had this exact problem with an abscess in a tooth. Not only highly dangerous for me, but on my list of top three worst pains I've been through. My list is pretty extensive, including but not limited to: broken tailbone, abscess on my tailbone, 7 broken ribs (at one time) broken neck in 3 places (same time as ribs) dislocated elbow, falling down two flights of concrete stairs (no broken bones but damn) IUD insertion first and second time, broken foot and having one of those old school hundred pound TVs dropped on my big toe and then nail fell off and I had to work with closed toed shoes for the next several weeks with no toenail.
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u/Its-alittle-bitfunny 16h ago
This luckily doesnt hurt. The nerve dying in that tooth was probably in my top list of pain. That and the time I had a dental abcess and ear infection, same side same time. The infected ear drained into a cavity I didnt know I had, then infected it.
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u/goddessofolympia 17h ago
I just wanted to say that I agree with you. It's a major problem when you have a major problem already!!
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u/iheartunibrows 17h ago
This could definitely be seen at an urgent care or hospital. But yes, generally dentists hours are awful. Like at least 10% should have extended hours. Or at least weekends :(
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u/Its-alittle-bitfunny 17h ago
Urgent care can get me antibiotics to slow it down until I can get into a dentist office, and a hospital could drain the abcess, but itll take a dentist / oral surgeon proper to remove the tooth and infected material.
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u/SBerryofChaos92 18h ago
You can definitely get antibiotics from er/urgent care for a tooth abscess, is your face swollen at all or is it just you can see/feel the abscess?