As much fun as a root canal!

DH had to have a root canal yesterday, and for some reason that I cannot fathom, the dentist didn't give him a pain prescription before he left the office. I wish he or I had thought to ask for one, but neither of us has had a root canal before so we didn't know the drill (get it, drill? heh...) He had to go to work in the ER right after his appointment, and things were okay until the local anesthetic wore off, but after that the trouble started. He took as much OTC pain medication as is safe to do, but he woke up in the middle of the night in unbearable pain. (10 out of 10, he said )

We called the dental emergency line at 5 a.m. and had the on-call dentist paged, but the pages went unanswered, which is also completely unfathomable. Fortunately the dentist's office was open today, and we were able to walk in and get a scrip. But treating pain after it has gotten so bad is more difficult than managing it preventatively, and DH had to call in sick for his ER shift today. Evidently that's very much frowned upon in medical resident world -- don't doctors understand that doctors get sick, too?!

Fortunately the pain meds are doing their job -- he slept all afternoon and feels much better now. He's scheduled to go in for a follow-up appointment this coming Friday, and he'll have to make sure I'm sequestered at home or in the waiting room, b/c I have a few words for those folks that couldn't be printed in a family newspaper!

[GrayMatterWife]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

Evidently that's very much frowned upon in medical resident world

There is some semi-apocryphal story that, a couple of years before DH became a resident, some guy in The Program was deathly ill, desperately dehydrated...and rounded hooked up to a IV fluid drip. WTF is THAT about? If I had been a patient, I would have thrown the GUY WITH THE IV out of my room... I want an MD who's not sicker than me!

DH got a VIOLENT (oh, so gross!) case of food poisoning the night before Thanksgiving last year. I mean...it was BAD. Vomiting every 15 minutes for 8 hours. At one point, he started semi-hallucinating. Wretching on the bathroom floor, unable to crawl. Awful. Made me question my competency in vowing to be his, "for better or worse, in sickness or in health" (God could not have been contemplating THIS...). Anyhow, he was supposed to be on-call all day Thanksgiving (start 6:00 AM) through Friday about noon.

At 5:15 AM, after six hours of this illness, he gives in and pages the Chief, to let him know that he physically cannot stand up. I have never seen DH so humiliated. It was like he was having to admit that his dog ate his homework and he got beat up by a 7-year-old girl with pigtails.

His Chief (who is a GOOD guy and a great doctor) was...completely human. I mean, I doubt he was thrilled, but he coordinated coverage without the requisite verbal humiliation I imagined was going to happen. But when DH hung up from the call, he just rolled over (on the bathroom floor) and moaned, "Oh, WEAK..."

That's pretty much all he said for the next 12 hours..."Weak. I am so WEAK." At first, I thought this was a bizarrely repeated description of his physical condition after hours of heaving. It wasn't: it was his self-imposed moral label. He had utterly failed, on a professional, personal, and deeply moral level, by inadvertently becoming incapacitated. I am willing to put up with a lot of the ego-driven male BS that goes along with surgery, and I am a pretty tough (intolerant) nut in terms of taking a "no whining, no crying, suck it up" attitude in general, but gimme a break. I am sure that even Harvey Cushing at some point got the flu. Did you want to be puking INTO the patient in the OR?

Needless to say, we will NEVER eat a hamburger at Chilis EVER again.

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

That sounds horrible. I hope he is feeling better today and that the pain meds have caught up with him.

When DH had an ER rotation intern year, he got really sick and dehydrated. He took his sorry self to work and the chief gave him an IV (and the ER wanted to charge a copay and get our insurance info , um NO). How would you feel as a patient being roomed, walking past a doctor getting an IV, and then have him come in and "care" for you? Craziness. I finally went and got him around 11pm because he couldn't stand up long enough. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So, yes, it makes no sense.

[GrayMatterWife]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

. . . (and the ER wanted to charge a copay and get our insurance info , um NO). . .

NO F**KING WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I WOULD HAVE PERSONALLY COME UP TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM TO LAUGH AT THE ADMITTING PERSON THAT THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA!!

Geez!

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

I hope he feels much better.

My DH had to have a root canal. He was in so much pain before it that he went to the ER for pain meds. This is a typical man in that he rarely goes to a doctor (physician DON'T heal thyself). Based on his behavior (grabbing face and practically laying on the hood of the car), I can't imagine that much pain, and I've had 3 kids.

Also, my brother had a root canal that didn't work, whatever that means, and discovered this on an international flight to Japan. He had to have another root canal in a Japanese hospital - and he speaks no Japanese and there was no interpreter. OMG He did give the whole Japanese experience 5 stars, though. Said they were much more professional, and efficient than his American dentist.

[peggyfromwastate]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

My dad (ER) used to go to work sick all the time. Once with walking pneumonia. Great, isn't it?



Hope you all are doing well! I have never heard of a dental office forgetting the pain meds scrip!

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

Phew, the pain meds have caught up -- he's been able to sleep and he can even eat solid food -- yay! It was kinda nice that he didn't have to go in yesterday -- we got to catch a little quality time together. Today we're working on cleaning the house, which is always fun

Thanks for the stories about other doctors trying to tough it out while sick! I agree, I wouldn't want to be treated by someone pulling an IV bag!

[Deebs]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

Sadly, if DH goes to work sick, I know that it is one of the few instances he will get medical care. He won't call a doc and go in for something that's acute, but he will let his colleagues treat him. So, I'm actually okay with him going to work ill. Plus, any time he's been REALLY sick, he has gotten sent home (especially during residency). I'm surprised one of the attendings didn't either write a scrip for him or get a hold of an on-call dentist. In our experience, those are typically bonuses of working in EM (that and being able to bypass triage and get treated).

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

I had such pain before my root canal that I called my dr for pain meds in the middle of the night. To bad when I got the meds they made me all night and morning long. When I got it treated, I have ever since thought dentists are some of the COOLEST people in the world. Anyone who can get rid of pain = cool person IMO I didn't have bad pain after the root canal - thank God, sounds horrible! And I too have talked to a gal who DH was a surgical resident and was hooked up to an IV, so he work while he was sick. Hello maybe they should hire more people if you can't support someone getting sick.

[DCJenn]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

The "rule" during residency was "if you're sick enough to stay at home you're sick enough to be in the hospital."

Nice, huh? When a bunch of them all got sick after the required weekend trip they all just took themselves to the various clinics and gve themselves IVs. Finally one of the attendings realized that w/ 7 (or more) of the peds residents all puking (among other things) all over the hospital, there was perhaps a better way to manage things.

Jenn

(We did not get sick- none of the people we shared a hotel suite w/ did either. We attribute that to the immense amount of alcohol in our respective systems.)

[migirl]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

Yep, DH has also dragged his vomity, feverish, achy self to work before. There are pretty much no such days as 'sick' days here either!

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

Sadly, if DH goes to work sick, I know that it is one of the few instances he will get medical care. He won't call a doc and go in for something that's acute, but he will let his colleagues treat him. So, I'm actually okay with him going to work ill. Plus, any time he's been REALLY sick, he has gotten sent home (especially during residency). I'm surprised one of the attendings didn't either write a scrip for him or get a hold of an on-call dentist. In our experience, those are typically bonuses of working in EM (that and being able to bypass triage and get treated).

We heard a story on the radio once about a doctor who had some terrible infection and was having all these alarming symptoms, but insisted she was fine, she just had the flu or something, and refused her family's requests to take her to the hospital. By the time she finally went in, she was in multiple organ failure (fortunately she lived to tell about it). I said to DH, "So if you start acting like that I have your advance permission to take you to the hospital against your will, right?" and he said, "Right." It's really hard, though, because those dawkters are trained to be so very certain and convincing in their medical opinions...

If the dentist hadn't been open on Saturday, we would have asked an attending for a scrip... we fell asleep while waiting for the on-call dentist to answer a page (which s/he never did, and we plan to lodge a complaint about that). Oh, and it didn't help that another resident, a rotator, had already paged DH saying, "I have the flu, pls tell the attending I can't come in." Of course DH felt he couldn't call in sick after that. T.S., I said! It's not his fault that someone else is sick!

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

(We did not get sick- none of the people we shared a hotel suite w/ did either. We attribute that to the immense amount of alcohol in our respective systems.)

That protective effect is pretty amazing, huh? (The way that alcohol protects me is by putting me to sleep, thus preventing me from going around collecting germs or otherwise getting myself into trouble. I'm such a lightweight... )

[weeniegeniewife]

Re: As much fun as a root canal!

I forced DH to come home after his surgeries last Tuesday and cancel his afternoon clinic. He was so sick from strep throat that he could barely move. Once he was afebrile again, he thanked me for making him cancel his clinic so that he could rest. If I hadn't he probably would have had to be admitted to the hospital himself!