I am thoroughly ashamed. I have struggled to resist seeking solace from psychological props like alcohol or drugs, for many years, but I’ve recently realised that I am, in fact…an addict! I’ve become totally addicted to dental groups on Facebook.
Dear Auntie Badd.
I am thoroughly ashamed. I have struggled to resist seeking solace from psychological props like alcohol or drugs, for many years, but I’ve recently realised that I am, in fact…an addict!
I’ve become totally addicted to dental groups on Facebook.
Private, NHS or just plain nasty, I can’t get enough of them. I currently belong to fifteen groups and all of my evenings are spent getting dizzy from the bitchiness, which is exhilarating. I feel so alive. These groups make me feel gloriously dirty. When I’m in a group, I can say and do anything I want. All I live for is ‘wow’ or ‘angry’ emojis in answer to something I’ve written and I love nothing more than slagging off a dentist with slightly conservative views.
If I read of a member of the group doing things in the surgery to the letter of an SOP, I just can’t help attacking. The higher up in dentistry they are, the more I want to take them down a peg or two, or label them with inappropriate epithets just to invoke a hysterical response.
The point is, it’s taking over my life. I’ve started a new group called ‘Storm Wimpole Street NOW.’ I know it’s wrong, but I’m drunk on the power. An unplanned bloody surgical no longer cuts it for me. I just want constant slanging matches. What can I do to escape this spite vortex? I’m 44 and I have a cat.
From Gretchen Victoria Black BDS, LDSRCS
Dear Gretchen,
Contact me again, and I’ll call the police.
ADVERT
Dear Dr Badd,
I’m really worried and need your help. I think the dental sales rep is stalking me. She turns up every few weeks bringing me unsolicited gifts of desensitising toothpastes and brushes with weird angles and bristles with rubber spikes that look like they’re designed to clean car wheel hubs. She gives things to my colleagues as well, but I think that’s just to throw everybody off the track.
She’s even left me a love letter at the reception desk, but I binned it. My colleague reckoned it was probably an ‘independent’ study demonstrating the efficacy of the new mouthwash she has also tried to gift me, but I don’t believe it. I am refusing to speak to her now. Mind you, everybody else in the practice also refuses to meet any dental reps.
This isn’t the first dental rep that has behaved like this. Every practice I go to, the reps, almost always female, try it on – like I’m anybody’s for a sniff of Triclosan. What can I do to put these reps off? Yes, I’m young, good-looking and I can place a rubber-dam clamp in twelve seconds without excising the palatal gingivae, but I’m not a sales rep’s plaything.
It’s got to the point where I am almost too scared to go to my BMW after work, in case she wants to give me a furtive six-pack of TePe’s. I’m 28 and drive a BMW X5.
From Glint Thrust, BDS
Dear Glint,
I can sort-of sympathise with you, although I can’t really in any way shape or form, empathise. Quite frankly, nobody has ever thrown themselves at me, although that’s not surprising. I look like a dishevelled Bernie Sanders if he were to let himself go. All reps ever wanted from me was to accept samples of denture fixatives and stuff to either cure halitosis or abrade the teeth until the dentine starts to show through.
I am, unusually, going to be kind here. Although you are obviously concerned regarding your ‘stalker,’ I feel you need to learn that one of the drawbacks of being a young dentist is you’re almost certainly an idiot. You will undoubtedly have this unwavering feeling that you are God’s gift to dentistry AND women, but you’re not. I hate to disillusion you, but to reps, you are merely a new untapped source of patient recommendations and they’ll kill to secure your ear in the middle of a busy day when you’re most vulnerable. This happens to every dentist on the planet. You’re not special. To reps, you’re just fresh meat. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll be hording desensitising toothpastes in your utility room and slavering over gratis electric toothbrushes. Grow up.
Dear Auntie Badd,
Just recently I’ve been thoroughly gripped by the subject of occlusion and have immersed myself totally in it. My passion for the subject has become so intense, I have found that I am often aroused during Zoom lectures on it.
My question is, do you have any cures for premature articulation?
Dr Jeffry Toobin DDS
Dear Jeffry,
I was going to say, why don’t you grind it, but that might land you in even more trouble.
Dental enthusiasm is a growing problem and you probably need some help before it takes over your life. If you contact me by email, I can put you in touch with someone who will be able to destroy your enthusiasm forever. In fact, I have a load of contacts like that – every single lecturer I ever encountered at my old dental school.
ADVERT
Dear Dr Badd,
I would very much welcome your advice on a clinical problem.
I have started an endo on a sclerosed upper six after being persuaded to do it by an insistent patient. She says she likes and trusts me and I although I was a little reluctant to take it on, I didn’t like the idea of disappointing her by turning her request down.
The problem is that I have been struggling to get into the canals. I’ve tried chelating agents but the secondary dentine is so hard it’s been breaking my rotary files. The sclerosis is laughing in the face of my gates-glidden. The palatal canal in particular is tricky to identify, even with transillumination and magnification. I think the mesio-buccal canal has two canals but I can only get half way down the canal on the palatal side. I am obviously worried about lateral perforation and the mounting cost of bent endo files.
Do you have any suggestions as to what to do?
Dr Phil Apex BDS
Hi Phil.
Phil!! Refer, you bloody fool!
Dear Dr Badd,
I am writing in absolute desperation.
I have been qualified for nearly twenty years and I feel I have a reasonable amount of experience, so I do try and provide comprehensive treatment for patients at my practice if I can. Very occasionally though, when really stuck, I do find that I need to refer for help from the local dental hospital.
My problem is that the local dental hospital, the restorative department in particular, is very unhelpful. They usually send back pointless rejection letter, with useless suggestions for managing the patient that doesn’t actually address the problem in any practical or meaningful way.
Do you have any suggestions for addressing this problem?
Dr Nicole Kidman BDS FDSRCS
Hi Nicole. Have you tried analysing the diet and monitoring the occlusion?
ADVERT
Dear Dr Badd,
HELP!
The local Boots keeps on running out of antibiotics in order for me to treat acute pulpitis effectively and the pharmacist has stopped me from prescribing any more dihydrocodeine tartrate.
Do you know of any online pharmacies that don’t ask questions?
Dr Anna Gesic BChD
Dear Anna,
That’s an awful predicament to be in. Everyone knows that antibiotics are the best cure for an inflamed pulp, especially in the middle of a busy day. Give me a couple of days. I know a bloke who knows a bloke. He does reconditioned paper masks as well if you’d like some.
Dear Mr Badd,
I’m not a dentist but I sort-of work in the dental field, as a high up executive in a dental regulatory body. I hadn’t better name the organisation.
My problem is that the whole of the dental profession seems to hate me. I’ve only got eleven months or so till I have to leave my post, but the criticism I receive is totally unjustified. Yes, I was criticised for mishandling a whistleblower complaint a few years ago, and fair enough, I was blamed for not helping the profession out by reducing the ARF or introducing a payment by instalment scheme when it was in desperate need during the lockdown. I suppose it was fair do’s that my organisation was criticised for withholding evidence from a discipliniary committee that led to a fraudulent dentist being reinstated to the register and yes, I AM one of the executives who is enabling dentists from overseas to register as therapists without testing their competence to drill.
But apart from that, my tenure in this high up post has been blameless. What can I do to change the opinion of my detractors?
Dr Billy Boyles (Chairman of an unnamed dental regulatory body)
Hi Billy.
Resign?