#Misappropriation of Dental Diagnostic Equipment

[aboxfullofnonsense]

This reminds me of an old story of my Father’s. When he was in the forces, he was lucky enough to serve on a base relatively close to home, and thus was able to visit his family in his off time for a decent meal and a hot bath. On one faithful occasion, he went to visit on of his sisters, who had recently moved into her own place for the first time. She was obviously very proud of herself, and keen to show off, but she had made the decision to sew her own curtains, and in her rush to tidy her project away and make the living room presentable, a needle was dropped, a needle which Dad had the misfortune of stepping on in his civilian shoes, and as it was a thick needle meant for dealing with thick blackout curtain fabric it made short work of the thin rubber sole, and then the sole of his foot, too.

Now, this was already a very bad time, but then after a lot of shouting and hopping and bleeding and panicking, his sister grips the end of the needle with a pair of forceps and pulls out… half of a needle.

Once everyone had time to calm down and staunch the bleeding, Dad makes the decision to go back to base and get the doctor to see to it there, as he’s likely to be seen far sooner there than at the overburdened public hospital, and it would save him a lot of bureaucracy in the long run given he was still in active service. So he calls ahead to his Father (who lives closer to the base) and limps into his sister’s car to get relayed back there.

It’s a four hour trip, so his Dad (my Grandpa) has had time to mull over the situation by the time he arrives, and raises the point that, while Dad is certainly in a lot of pain, they have no way of knowing that the needle wasn’t already broken when he first stepped on it, and suggests they swing by his clinic to take some x-rays of his foot before they go to base. If there's nothing in there he can get another night sleep at home, and if there is it'll be diagnostic if nothing else.

Dad saw the logic in that, so off to Grandpa’s clinic they went.

Now, it is important to note that Grandpa was not a podiatrist, or a surgeon, or even a radiographer, Grandpa was a dentist, but he was a dentist with a state of the art mobile-arm mounted dental x-ray machine and he knew how to use it, and thus Dad was swaddled up in a lead vest, plunked his foot up into the dentists chair, and Grandfather took his happy snaps, and when they were done, well you didn’t need to be a podiatrist to know half-a-needle when you see one, and that it’s not meant to be wedged inbetween your phalanges.

Save to say Dad was bundled up again, and hustled off to the base doctor, his happy snaps in their brown envelope, and after a fair bit or waiting and bellyaching and hobbling back and forth was finally seen by the base doctor. He explained the whole story and handed over the x-rays, and the doctor took a look at the half-a-needle and made all the expected hissing sympathetic noises, then asked “your Dad’s a dentist then?”

“Yes,” said Dad.

“Thought so. We’re more than likely going to have to do some surgery to get that out. Mind if I ask for a second opinion on this?”

“Sure,” Dad said.

So the doctor makes a call, and a few minutes pass, Dad’s foot is throbbing and he is tired and miserable, and then, who should come in to the room but the base dentist.

“Have a look at these,” said the Doctor, and nonchalantly waved to the dental X-rays.

The dentist looks, then looks again, then looks at Dad white in the face, as if he’s surprised he’s upright and talking at all, then looks back at the x-rayed phalanges in all their needle impaled glory.

“Bloody hell, I’ve never seen molars this impacted in all my life!” he said, and, then the Doctor, and Dad managed about, five seconds of stoicism before they broke down laughing.

By all accounts, the dentist never lived it down.  

Doctor: What do you see in this X-ray?

Students: *collective gasp*

Doctor: Please don’t do that in front of patients.