Letter From a Reader: Thanks to the Doctor, I Lost My Smile!

Image courtesy of www.zenlifesolutions.com

Dear Fashion Pulis,

I would like to share with you and your readers my horrible experience with a dentist in one of the upscale malls in Ortigas. On July 8 of this year, I went to the clinic to have my wisdom teeth extracted. Since this was supposedly a routine extraction, I didn’t go to my family dentist anymore.

That was my biggest mistake.

After the operation, my jaws were numb. Thinking it was due to the anesthesia, I toughed it out. A week went by and still I couldn’t feel anything. When it was time to go back to take out the sutures, I mentioned to the dentist that I still have no feeling on my lower jaw. That’s when he broke the news to me. He said that in some cases, nerves are damaged thus, the loss of feeling on the affected area. I couldn’t believe he was only informing me of that possibility that moment.

The thing was, they claim to be world class; they use state of the art facilities yet, they didn’t see that it was too deep to touch?

It has been more than four months now and I still have no feeling on my lower jaw. It’s been very challenging since it’s weird not to have a feeling on one or some parts of my face. Who knows what other effects this might bring about in the future?

I have consulted other dentists and everyone said it might never heal. If it does, it will never be the same as it was before. They were all surprised that the dentist did not inform me of the possible effects or that he treated the operation the way he did knowing the kind of depth where my wisdom teeth were might result to the loss of feeling on my jaws.

I hope others can learn a thing or two from my experience. Aside from the background check one must do on any surgeon, research on their works, as well. Ask all the questions you might have and ask to be informed of worst case scenarios so you can decide if you want to push through with the procedure or not.

More power to you, FP! And thank you for being an effective vehicle to inform the public of what is really out there.

Sincerely,

Zharmagne Dizon