to walk out of dental surgery after waiting for 40 mins

[gingeroots]

Have had trouble with particular tooth for over a year .

Dentist suspected sinus related .

After several agonising flareups ,3 lots of antibiotics ,referral to dental hospital for X rays I finally have a 45 min appointment scheduled for 10 .30 am today .

It's unclear to me ( and probably the dentist ) what he'll find when he drills through the gold crown this morning .
The dental hospital think the root may be cracked - in which case extraction is only answer ( messy I imagine as root will break more ) or if no crack revealed whether a root filling will be possible as the xray shows calcification which apparently ,according to degree ,prevents root filling .


So I'm nervous but proud of the calm I'm maintaining .
But I couldn't handle the delay to be seen ,feeling more and more nervous ,creeping nausea ,panicking about fact that dentist clearly under pressure and running late so may not be in best state of mind himself .
Plus thinking I'll now have to rush to elderly mothers ( who I care for and need to be really calm and together for ) .

Speak to receptionists - they talk over eachother " so you don't want to be seen now ? " / " he's running late because our systems are down " .
In the end I give up and flee not wanting to add throwing up ,tears and humilation to the mix .

Was I unreasonable ?

[DameMargotFountain]

i have severe dental phobia, in tears reading the OP

YANBU

[gingeroots]

Oh thank you DMF , half of me thinks I should have waited and the other half thinks no .
But it's lovely to have someone who understands how shredded I was starting to feel .

[Iheartpasties]

cutting off your nose to spite your face?

[gingeroots]

I don't think so ,the session was likely to be long and complicated and I think best faced when both I and dentist are at our best .

[NotQuintAtAllOhNo]

So, what did you achieve by running off?

[avivabeaver]

only you know whether you are being reasonable or not.

i don't like the dentist at all. however, having had the nightmare of sitting in a waiting room for 40 mins whilst listening to a woman having a root canal filling, i made a on the spot decision to have my tooth out so stress can make the most together of us make odd decisions.

i would drop a line to the dentist, explaining that you needed to leave and why and see if you can make another appointment or chat through on the phone what is involved.

[gingeroots]

I have to get through the rest of my day and meet obligations with a calm and collected manner .
THis was going to be tricky to pull off given dental appointment but I feel it would have been impossible given the added stress and my deteriotating frame of mind .
Or that's what I'm telling myself ...you may be right ,should have stuck it out .

[fluffyraggies]

Sympathies OP :)

Massive dentaphobe here too. I think you're reasoning is right tbh. I think if the dentists were running late, not only would they have been grateful for an appointment drop out - but would agree that if you're a very very nervous patient a rushed off it's feet surgery is not the best place to be if it is possible to return at a later date.

'Specially if you're stressing in the chair about being late for something else as well.

[cozietoesie]

Hate to say this, gingeroots, but once you've got the tooth sorted, you may well still have pain and the sinus issue to deal with. I still get 'toothache' from a tooth which has been extracted without any root remnant left behind as confirmed by x-ray. It will go away for a week or two, back for a week or two and so on. The dentist was pretty certain that it wasn't phantom (well I could have told her that!) but a sinus problem. (Apparently all the relevant nerves are in much the same place.)

You might be as well going to the GP as well.

[StanleyLambchop]

I think forty minutes is an unacceptable time to wait. If you turned up forty minutes late for your appointment then you would probably be turned away, or be greeted with the cats bum mouth and made to wait until the end of the session to see if they could fit you in. Sometimes emergencies happen and dentists do run late, but I think you should be told of the likely length of the delay and given the option of another appointment if the delay will make you late for something else. Courtesy works both ways. YANBU.

[gingeroots]

Thanks to those who are feeling sympathetic towards me - cozietoes and
stanley .
stanely I think you've hit the nail on the head ,I'll see if I can suggest this to the surgery ...I find their reception staff a trifle offhand/unthinking and perhaps they would benefit from a little training .

[gingeroots]

Thank you fluffy ,that was my thinking !

[Alibabaandthe40nappies]

Well I can kind of understand why you ran, but now you have to go through it again so perhaps it would have been better to stick it out?

Maybe the next time you make an appointment you need to have it later in the day after you've done other things so that you aren't feeling in a rush?

[DinosaursOnASpaceship]

I am really not keen on going to the dentist. I used to be fine until I got a bad tooth and had to have it out at the emergency dentist and then it got infected. Haven't been back since. I had to take the children a few weeks ago though and we ended up waiting over an hour, but it wasn't a problem because of the way it was handled. The lady in front of us has dementure (I think) and the dentist came out of his surgery to sit and chat to her in the waiting room to put her at ease, explain what would happen etc. So when she went through into the surgery she was relaxed and comfortable. I was apologised to by both the dentist and receptionist (not that I complained, I thought what the dentist did was wonderful, he held her hand and everything) bought a huge mug of tea and crayons for the boys to keep them amused. They did get a bit impatient and noisy but not a single eyebrow was raised. I was really impressed. Not impressed enough to get in the chair myself although I got as far as making an appointment which I later cancelled

[gingeroots]

Next time I'm going to make it the first appointment of the day ,I really can't cope with waiting for a delayed appointment .
( after I've been stressing all weekend and awake all night ,forcing myself to eat something on day of appointment ,it's not like I wake up sunny and bright and only get stressed when I'm at surgery .It's cumulative and ...somehow unfair to be thrown a curve ball when I've tried so hard to keep myself together )

[cozietoesie]

I'm dental phobic also. I think I'd have stuck it out but only through knowing I might never have the courage to make another appointment - unless I was at death's door.

Can you imagine what it's like to be at a party and have to tell someone you're a dentist? I can't even talk to them, I'm so bad.

[gingeroots]

Oh dinasaurs ,what a lovely dentist ,make an appointment !

[gingeroots]

bump ,I don't care ,still really upset .

[BonaDea]

I actually can't believe that dentists, doctors, hospitals and the like are allowed to operate the way they do in terms of keeping people waiting. I mean I know we are lucky to have the NHS but the clue is in the name -SERVICE. In any other sphere to give someone an appointment and then leave them waiting for an hour would be out of the question.

I go to a high risk ante natal clinic every fortnight and although I am grateful for the time and attention I get WHEN SEEN I sit there every week incredulous as a maximum 20 minutes of being seen by 3 different people is eeked out into 2 hours of waiting. Do they think people don't have jobs or places to be?

[VonScareBurton]

I sympathise, I really do.

However you don't know if there was an emergency that had to be seen first, maybe they said the systems were down to avoid a confrontation, you know, a 'who's emergency was the most urgent' type situation. I'm guessing the dentists and the receptionists didn't just decide to give themselves the day from hell with complaining, nervous, stressed people just for the fun of it?
There must have been a valid reason for them to be behind by (at least) 40 minutes already by 10.30? After all, they will have to see everyone with an appointment so I presume they will all stay late today?

Hmm. Whilst I think YANBU for being stressed and rightly pissed off, I think maybe you were being a bit U for walking. They were probably relieved you walked as it will have eased their backlog. Now you just have to do it all again. I do get it though.

Hope it's sorted soon.

[Alibabaandthe40nappies]

So Bona - if your appointment overruns because you have complications of some kind, should the Dr/dentist just chuck you out into the corridor so as not to be late for the next person?

[gingeroots]

Thanks vonscare burton" .

[sparkle12mar08]

People like me might be the cause of keeping you waiting sometimes. I had a very bad reaction to the adrenaline in the injections once, and it took the dentist and the nurse twenty minutes to bring me down from the mania and paranoia. They couldn't let me out into the waiting room even if they'd wanted to, so that was at least two appointments delayed.

Suffice to say I now have the non-adrenaline version of the injections at all times. It wasn't a pleasant experience. I'd thoroughly recommend them too, especially if you're a nervous patient with enough adrenline of your own coursing round - I never realised that the reason I felt physically sick when lying on the chair was because of adrenaline overload. The euphoria and manicness immediately afterwards is also because of the adrenaline - it's nasty stuff if your are sensitive to it.

[CamperFan]

Poor you! Having had an unexpected root canal (knew I needed fillings, but not the root canal) this afternoon, I completely sympathise. I don't have a dental phobia, but I totally get why people have them.

In addition, when I went for my appointment last week, it was delayed by 45 mins - I almost left, because I'd left my 1 year old with a friend and I really didn't want to impose on her for that long. I was a bit annoyed as they were a full 2 people behind, so could have given me a call really. I stayed though, for the pure hassle factor of having to make another appointment. Only another 2 more appointments to go .

Good luck OP, you'll be so glad when it's over. Hypnosis?