Apparently I'm a risk to the staff there, because I'll go on a violent, possibly drug-induced rampage.
Also, I can only be treated by a male dentist.
I'm now signed on with a dentist in a different county, who - inexplicably - hasn't needed to hire bouncers whenever I visit.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic because frontline healthcare has to be one of the harshest jobs going, so some false positives are only to be expected - even if in this case that means labelling a drug-free vegetarian teetotaller whose last street brawl happened at age 7 as a social risk.
But still. The real problem is the lack of NHS dentistry in this county. I made the mistake of assuming the NHS dental care meant that NHS care would be available. But in practice there almost isn't any, and what used to be a free community service has been reduced to emergency-only status, and even that's only available for very limited periods.
I'd go private but it was a private dentist who caused the problem in the first place by 'improving' a crown that didn't need his attention - possibly just so he could pad out his bottom line. (His surgery has closed now.)
As usual, the underlying issue is our old favourite about greed being good, and the culture of abuse that it's based on. Dehumanising people for financial gain and/or to minimise 'costs' like social services is fascism, pure and simple.
If the system doesn't model empathy and does model scarcity, then scarcity and patient abuse - up to and including preventable death - become inevitable.
Despite national and international guidelines for its management, many patients with pain are not prescribed an analgesic appropriate to the severity of their pain (Cleeland et al., 1994). Evidence suggests that patients in minority groups may have an even greater risk for undertreatment of pain (Anderson et al., 2000; Cleeland et al., 1997). [...] Pain has to be appreciated before it can be treated. In addition, patients seen at centers that treated predominantly minority patients were three times more likely than those treated elsewhere to have inadequate pain management (Cleeland et al., 1997). Other factors that predicted inadequate pain treatment included age of 70 years or older, female sex, and better performance status. [...] footnote
The problem is not just in the US:
Many women reported that they did not bother to tell their doctor about their problems because they anticipated an adverse or a non-helpful response. Of those who did talk to their doctor, especially when they related their side effects to tubal ligation, the overwhelming majority were dissatisfied with the responses they received. Overall women appeared to be most unhappy about not being believed in relation to their side effects; being told that their symptoms were all in their minds; or that the problems they experienced were individual and idiosyncratic. Many women were concerned that when they reported abnormal or different menstrual patterns that caused pain, discomfort or inconvenience, their doctor did not believe there was a problem. Disillusioned by their doctors' lack of understanding of their symptoms, they were often told that side effects as a result of their surgery were non-existent - `old wives tales'. This is in spite a plethora of side-effects for tubal ligation reported in the scientific literature which included; changed menstrual patterns, period and mid-cycle pain, perimenopausal symptoms and increased risk of hysterectomy. (Birdsall et al 1994; Goldhaber et al 1993; Peterson et al 1996; Vivanathan & Wyshak 2000). The consequences of doctors not accepting the knowledge women had of their own bodies as `real' sometimes meant that symptoms became very severe before they were attended to, as in the case of undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy occurring outside the uterus usually in the fallopian tubes).
Just one of many reasons why women prefer female ob/gyns especially and female doctors in general; though there are of course "boys' club" female practitioners who feel it is more "professional" to treat female patients with masculinist mistrust and condescension, thankfully they are relatively few.
See also The DEA War on Pain Doctors but to be fair I must say 'consider the source': a drug peddling web site :-) The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
