Toothache

Accyexplorer

Accyexplorer

Nori Brick
Tackler
Have you ever suffered from toothache? The mere mention of the word can make folk cringe,its said to be one of the worst pains imaginable- I can now confirm this.
Last week (Mon-Tues) I developed a severe pain in one of my molars,the pain radiated through my cheekbone,and was also causing me earache (a worthy contender for the worst pain ever).
I took a ibuprofen (400mg) and a paracetamol (200mg),I also gargled with a little bit of TCP,but the pain was persistent in giving me grief.
By Thursday my face had swollen up and i was feeling a little feverous.Fearing infection,I went to the quacks and got a course of antibiotics (amoxicillin).
The pain just kept getting worse but I suffer from a fear of dentists so i 'stupidly' dismissed the I needed to get it extracted.
Over the next couple of days I tried dealing with the relentless pain using a arsenal of relief treatments.Everything from oil of cloves and rinsing with warm salty water to tramadol when the unremitting pain got too much to bare.
By Saturday, I was in total agony so needing urgent treatment Mrs E arranged for me to see a (emergency?) dentist up at oak house.
I'll be honest,my sphincter was twitching,I really don't like going to see the dentist even if their not the drill and fill type of yesteryear.
I'm pleased to say that the staff up there were excellent and before I knew it I was minus a tooth and pain free....god bless the NHS the saviour of our nation's health :).
 
I also had a phobia of dentists...I didn't visit the dentists for more than 40 years.
I filed down broken teeth with a diamond file rather than go and be seen.
Then i decided that this was stupid. I put myself on the list to be accepted by Accy Vic dentist(this later became the current Oak house Dentists).
I was assigned to the care of a lovely man....David Heeley. In the first few weeks he removed 5 broken stumps of teeth and did a couple fillings for me.
He offered to refer me to hospital for a general anaesthetic, but I declined and had all this work done under local anaesthetic.....he went at my pace and was very very patient with me.
I have been going for regular check ups now for about 8 years.
I still get butterflies when I have to attend, but I am far better.
Alas on the 17th of December David Heeley left Oak house to take over a dental unit for nervous and vulnerable adults in based in Preston.
I will have to get used to someone new, but due to the good work he did I know that this is OK......and those very nervous patients in Preston are getting a gem of a dentist.

Jason, glad to hear that you have been sorted out.....now you should see if they would take you on, so that you never need to go through all that again.
 
40years :eek: I thought my 5yr campaign was impressive.
I also received a similar treatment,the dentist was great,my visible body shakes were a obvious giveaway to my phobia.
One thing is certain,sooner or later,the excruciating pain of toothache 'will' drive you to seek oral treatment at the dentist.

Good on you getting through that many years without a visit or popping painkillers like sweets :)
 
In all other respects I looked after my teeth....and I know that might sound crazy when I did not visit the dentist for so long...but I did clean my teeth regularly........I was just so afraid of dentistry...and it all stems back to being held down in the dentists chair in the School dentists on Cannon street....way back when children were seen and not heard.
That is where my phobia began.
It is something that is never truly eradicated, but the care and kindness of the team at Oak House have made it manageable.
So Jason get yourself signed up to their list if you can...i promise you will never regret it.
 
Margaret Pilkington said:
it all stems back to being held down in the dentists chair in the School dentists on Cannon street....way back when children were seen and not heard.
That is where my phobia began.
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By "held down", do you mean physically restrained? Did kids get their arms strapped down at Cannon st?

Margaret Pilkington said:
So Jason get yourself signed up to their list if you can...i promise you will never regret it.
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It's on my todo list,like you say,I won't regret it. :)
 
Accyexplorer said:
By "held down", do you mean physically restrained? Did kids get their arms strapped down at Cannon st?



It's on my todo list,like you say,I won't regret it. :)
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I wasn't strapped down , but held down by a very beefy dental assistant while my tooth was drilled and filled.....I would have been about eight or nine years old at the time.

Glad to hear that you are going to make Oak house a regular on your calendar.
 
Margaret Pilkington said:
In all other respects I looked after my teeth....and I know that might sound crazy when I did not visit the dentist for so long...but I did clean my teeth regularly........I was just so afraid of dentistry...and it all stems back to being held down in the dentists chair in the School dentists on Cannon street....way back when children were seen and not heard.
That is where my phobia began.
It is something that is never truly eradicated, but the care and kindness of the team at Oak House have made it manageable.
So Jason get yourself signed up to their list if you can...i promise you will never regret it.
Click to expand...

Yes Margaret those Cannon Street dentists were the stuff of nightmares and still give me the heebie jeebies just thinking about em'. It was the slow running belt drives whirring about just above your head and the whining drill vibrations resonating through my scull that put me off dentists for a good few years.
I am sure Ian Fleming modeled Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love on the lady who attacked my teeth there back in the day. :hidewall:
 
(Shudder)......Yes, except the dental assistant in my past was like a Russian shot putter.
It takes no effort at all to bring her features and menacing stance to mind.
I am sure that the clinic did far more harm by creating fears and phobias in the children of my generation, than the good it did in looking after our teeth.

If I got a slip to take home for parental consent, I felt physically sick.
 
Margaret Pilkington said:
......I was just so afraid of dentistry...and it all stems back to being held down in the dentists chair in the School dentists on Cannon street....way back when children were seen and not heard.
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Margaret may I ask for a little clarification, was this organised through or at the school? The reason I ask is I have no memory of any 'medical interest' in our teeth at school. I remember two visits by the 'nit nurse' who took a casual interest in our hair and significant interest in our ears, and three visits by nurses to give polio innoculations but thats all.

NB This was primary school, secondary school - nothing!
 
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Hill Walker said:
Margaret may I ask for a little clarification, was this organised through or at the school? The reason I ask is I have no memory of any 'medical interest' in our teeth at school. I remember two visits by the 'nit nurse' who took a casual interest in our hair and significant interest in our ears, and three visits by nurses to give polio innoculations but thats all.

NB This was primary school, secondary school - nothing!
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Yes, it was through school.
The school dental service used to visit and check our teeth, the nit nurse came and checked our heads(thankfully never found any little walkers in mine or any of my brothers) and the medical service also checked our weight and I can remember having to pick marble up with my toes.
We were made to get undressed and stand in the main hall of the school in just our vests and drawers while a barrage of nurses checked our height, weight and general wellbeing. They did eye tests too.
This was at Junior school...in secondary school it was just the dentist and the nit nurse that I remember.

If problems were found then you used to get a slip of paper to take home for parental consent to treatment.
One of the girls in my class was identified as having some problem and she used to go to Cannon St clinic every week for sunlamp treatment....i was quite envious of that....not so envious of the slips from the dentists...in fact i once got one and failed to give it to my parents...thinking I would escape the dreaded clinic. No such thing the head master sent Ma a letter to dob me in.

All this happened in the early 1950's.
Surely I am not the only BOB on here to remember these things.
 
Hill Walker said:
Margaret may I ask for a little clarification, was this organised through or at the school? The reason I ask is I have no memory of any 'medical interest' in our teeth at school. I remember two visits by the 'nit nurse' who took a casual interest in our hair and significant interest in our ears, and three visits by nurses to give polio innoculations but thats all.

NB This was primary school, secondary school - nothing!
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Pretty sure it was organised through the school (Peel Park Juniors in my case) you had an appointment time given you to have an inspection at the Cannon Street Dental Clinic (now a Childrens Day Care centre)


Nit Nurse inspections were every year junior and a couple of times in secondary HW.
There was also a couple of visits by the district nurse in secondary for a general check up as we moved through puberty, tonsils and I think testicles checked, separate spatulas here as I recall. Maybe they just alternated the same ones for effect from pupil to pupil? :confused:;)
 
As for nits(I know this has nothing to do with toothache) my mother was religious about checking our heads every Friday night before our weekly bath(tin one, off the wall in the back yard) that and washing our hair with Derbac soap.
I only got head lice once...and that was as a first year student nurse working on E3 ward at QPH......one of the little blighters hitched a lift on me while I was bathing and delousing a tramp who had been brought in for care.
It is still a mystery as to how this head louse managed to get through the protective gear I wearing during this process......the blighter was soon located and put to death by squashing.
 
Thanks for that, I was just a little curious. Things were obviously different in different parts of the country.
I always thought the polio jabs were badly organised. We were all assembled in the hall and had to go up to he stage one at a time and have the jab in public and then return to one's place in the hall. Perhaps they thought doing it that way would promote 'braveness before one's peers'. In some cases it might have worked, but in many it did not!
 
My dislike of dentists came from a visit to one on Burnley Rd - both front teeth cracked when hit by a cricket bat - he drilled both cracks out and filled them - without an anaesthetic. Took a long time to get over that, not until my '30s when I wanted the RAF dentist to play in the football team, but he cured my phobia, absolutely brilliant chap.
Can't remember having jabs for Polio, all I remember are sugar lumps. Jabs came later, 70 or so airmen lined up and progressed between two lines of medics - about 8 or 10 jabs in total - quite a few drop outs, literally.
 
Oh dear I must be losing it !!! I went to Peel Park but cannot for the life of me remember having my teeth looked at. I did go to a dentist regularly though that my mum and dad went to. I have a vague recollection of having the polio sugar lump though. I am lucky to have a wonderful dentist now. He has cured my son of his fears with his calm quiet manner. I must admit I have never had toothache thankfully.
 
Margaret Pilkington said:
I also had a phobia of dentists...I didn't visit the dentists for more than 40 years.
I filed down broken teeth with a diamond file rather than go and be seen.
Margaret, you not the only one wth a phobia of dentists, but mine was more of a hatred of them, I can still remember back in the 1930's and that torture camp in Cannon St. We had to go there wether we liked it of not, sit in a big staight backed chair with a head clamp, he had a drill that he worked with his foot, he also had a gadjet that held you gob open, you could neither swallow or do anything,and if you started crying you got a back hander.
As I was growing up I pulled my own teeth with pliers, it was painfull some times, but owt was better than going to a dentist, then in my 70's the doctor looked in my gob, and ordered me to the dentist, she was a nice young lady in Warner St, who said she couldn't do more than take a mouth cast, and it woud be horsepital. I went and said I wanted to be treated as if I was royalty, no pain no fuss. He grinned and said Ok, when I woke up from the anasthetic, I had been treated like Royalty, the Queens farrier was stood there, e were built like a brick toilet, leather apron, giant pair of pliers, the lot.
Then I was told to see the dentist in 3 weeks, she sat me down, looked in my gob, shook her head took a picture and said youve got a new tooth growing, it was coming out of the roof of my mouth, she said it must have been there all my life, had to wait till it was big enough to be pulled, then on the magic day out it came, she got the original cast, but it no longer fit, she said my tongue had swelled and taken up the space, I've had to, put up with no teeth ever since, now its a ******, some things I liked I can no longr eat, I used to love raw carrots, and peanuts, gone for ever. I only hope that sod of a school dentist died a horrible death.
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