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Nov. 13th, 2008 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupI suppose if I have to be a fascinating teaching case for something, I prefer it to be for dental residents, rather than brain surgeons or oncologists. Although my supervising physician/dentist is a nerve specialist, and that is what I was there for, so it's not as good as, say, a head of hair that's just too dang luxurious. Teaching hospitals are a little weird: their technology is not up to date- it took me half an hour to get entered in the computer, and then be given a paper chart. Despite many, many phone calls I could not get my chart and imaging from my dentist to the university dental clinic. The main entrance is beautiful, but about 100 feet in any direction it turns into mental-hospital white. There's a weird sense that everyone around you has a really interesting disease, and I think it makes patients nicer to each other (some of the patients are students or merely really poor, but you can't distinguish between them, except for creepy unkempt guy who stood way too close to me in line at the registration office and was way to eager to join a conversation. Get a haircut, hippie).
I spent two and a half hours at the univeristy medical center, of which an hour and forty five minutes was with doctors. A good deal of that was with residents, the two good ones and the one who I found somewhat flaky. I'm a big hit with the residents because I have completely inexplicable symptoms that are very well documented, and my responses to "does this hurt?" tests they perform have near doctor-precision. Also, I think using the phrase "Bayesian priors" in my description of an attempted self-treatment won me some points. Teaching the medical students is a good deal, because the supervising dentist (who I saw for a good deal less than 1.75 hours but a good deal more than I usually see my dentist) has a hypothesis that would explain my symptom: My cold-detecting nerves are have been rewired to a pain-reporting neuron, rather than the more traditional cold reporting neuron. Which would explain why hot food makes it feel better and cold food is so painful I went so long without chewing it on my left side I forgot to list it as a symptom. The in-office test with local anesthetic was rather remarkable (also, weird. The previously excruciatingly sensitive tooth felt fine, but the next one over, which got less anesthesia, because really sensitive), but instead of assuming he's right he's having me test myself over a period of weeks with a much longer lasting anesthetic. .
The anesthetic is actually an liquid anti-depressant applied topically, and the supervising dentist one of the people researching and pioneering its use. Normally that would worry me, but it turns out that after you've endured enough pain "experimental" becomes a feature. I also have an official diagnosis, but I'm avoiding googling it because I don't want to discover any extra symptoms.
I spent two and a half hours at the univeristy medical center, of which an hour and forty five minutes was with doctors. A good deal of that was with residents, the two good ones and the one who I found somewhat flaky. I'm a big hit with the residents because I have completely inexplicable symptoms that are very well documented, and my responses to "does this hurt?" tests they perform have near doctor-precision. Also, I think using the phrase "Bayesian priors" in my description of an attempted self-treatment won me some points. Teaching the medical students is a good deal, because the supervising dentist (who I saw for a good deal less than 1.75 hours but a good deal more than I usually see my dentist) has a hypothesis that would explain my symptom: My cold-detecting nerves are have been rewired to a pain-reporting neuron, rather than the more traditional cold reporting neuron. Which would explain why hot food makes it feel better and cold food is so painful I went so long without chewing it on my left side I forgot to list it as a symptom. The in-office test with local anesthetic was rather remarkable (also, weird. The previously excruciatingly sensitive tooth felt fine, but the next one over, which got less anesthesia, because really sensitive), but instead of assuming he's right he's having me test myself over a period of weeks with a much longer lasting anesthetic. .
The anesthetic is actually an liquid anti-depressant applied topically, and the supervising dentist one of the people researching and pioneering its use. Normally that would worry me, but it turns out that after you've endured enough pain "experimental" becomes a feature. I also have an official diagnosis, but I'm avoiding googling it because I don't want to discover any extra symptoms.
