How did you deal with knowing a doctor or dentist screwed up?

I am curious why you aren’t going to pursue this even as a smaller malpractice claim? If your dentist screwed up, and you have had to spend the time and money with other practitioners to correct this, I think you should seek compensation at least for the extra expenses incurred.
Not only for the practical aspect, but because I think you will feel more positive going forward if you have been proactive, and perhaps helped prevent this kind of mistake being done to someone else.
In my case, as a young woman, I had a number of doctors tell me to “not worry your pretty little head” about something that was a real medical concern, and led to permanent damage because it went untreated for years due to the lack of medical attention.
Unfortunately, in the 1970s, most of the physicians still enjoyed a godlike status which could not be argued with, especially not by a young woman.

I hope you get this cleared up, the frustration as well as the original issue can be overwhelming.

@canidmajor My experience is most people and dentists don’t believe me. They don’t believe everything changed from that one bad procedure. You can see in my photos, and probably X-rays, the change in my mouth, but I have no confidence about trying to fight it. I went to two other dentists after him who didn’t correct it. Finally, a prosthodontist gave me significant relief, but not complete, and my entire mouth has shifted and my front teeth are crooked now for more reasons than one, all related to this idiot who screwed up. I’m sure I’m starting to show signs of grinding, and that’s so common and the catch all everyone uses that again I would have to fight it and I’m tired. I actually had a sleep study done before this, so I can prove I was not a grinder, but if I start collecting all this data what will it do? People just think I’m obsessive and neurotic. This happens to everyone I know with chronic problems and feel unheard or not believed.

I guess maybe I’m supposed to handle it better and just nice forward? I don’t understand how people take things like this in stride. I’m trying to understand and be better.

Most people wouldn’t understand why I didn’t keep going to dentists until I got it fixed, before my entire mouth shifted, but I have had a lot crap in my life dealing with doctors, and most annoying is being accused of being a hypochondriac or of complaining about something that they feel doesn’t exist. At least the prosthodontist immediately saw a problem, I just don’t want to keep filing away my teeth, when for my whole life I had no problem. I resent it, and feel it can cause more damage and I’ll still want to straighten my teeth again.

I probably will have to file one of my front teeth to make them right, and have it bonded or capped.

What sucks is the idea of a year or more of braces. He really fucked me up, and my inability to deal with medical professionals certainly didn’t help me.

I learned in the process that dentists consider the top of your top teeth as the end farthest from your gums. Not understanding this made things worse for me in the very beginning of this journey. I blame the dentists. I bet a bunch of people think of the top of their upper teeth as the gum line. Actually, I know it, because the prosthodontist was sure to have me clarify what I meant. It’s obscene to me and impossible to me to think that a dentist with over 10 years of experience hasn’t figured out lay people might confuse that. It’s like when someone says they have a stomach ache, do you assume it’s actually their stomach organ, or have them clarify? People refer to their belly region as their stomach all too often.

I’m so pissed.

Sorry for the vent.

I guess there probably still is a closing-of-ranks attitude in such professions, I had hoped that things had improved in the last few decades.
I am so sorry you have to go through this, sometimes it can feel like you’re shouting into the surf.

You don’t have too many options. However, there are a couple of approaches.

I know that in Atlanta, there are various “rate your doctor” websites. Sometimes anonymous, sometimes not. Go onto those websites and factually – not emotionally lay out the problem and name the dentist.

You can probably lodge a complaint with the American Dental Association, who track these things. There may be a local chapter. Doubtful anything will happen, but it will be ‘on paper’, so to speak.

Finally, “word of mouth”. Tell everyone you know. Spread the word. If it is the truth, it is not slander.

My one situation was clearly the doctor’s fault, and put my life at risk. Someone else picked up the ball and saved my life. The guilty doctor packed up and moved in the night. I pursued no case because the only guilty party left without a trace. It was the skill and devotion of others which saved me.
If that doctor had stayed…...

A few years back my grandfather went into the hospital for a routine surgery. When he was wheeled into the room after recovery, his skin was blue and he was shivering violently. I told the nurse that he didn’t look good at all and asked what was wrong. She said, “Oh, he’s just cold.” My mom and I both said that couldn’t be true. He looked worse off than just cold. My grandmother told us to leave the poor nurse alone because she was just doesn’t nag her job.

We went and got lunch to wait for him to wake up a little. When we got back to the room, he was hooked up to a bunch of monitors and had a full c-pap mask over his face. We ask e what happened. A different nurse was in the room and said that his oxygen levels dropped down below 40% and he was in danger because it went unnoticed for a while. Of course, we all remembered how we saw him blue and shivering and the nurse said he was just cold.

Being products of their generation, they both refused to sue the hospital. They said accidents happen and we should just go on with life and be happy he was still alive. The problem was, h was never quite the same after that. He went from sharp as a tack to foggy headed. He would ramble on when talking and would forget what he was talking about mid sentence. My grandmother insisted that it was just my grandfather getting old, but it didn’t seem like dementia that other people got. It started immediately after he gained full consciousness from that surgery. It never got worse. I think he had minor brain damage from being oxygen deprived for too long.

While they never sued or complained to anyone, after that incident, if my grandfather ever got sick they made a point never to go to the rural county hospital. They would demand to be sent to a hospital in a large city almost two hours away after that. I think they knew what happened and that was their way with dealing with it.

@JLeslie have you imbibed a little. We’ve had many talks about dentistry. Your statement about tooth surfaces, uh really. .,

If I remember right, you had a filling? In a front tooth? replaced. It never felt right. Your teeth have shifted. The questions are : how old was that filling? Was it a filling? Or a crown? The answers are: a tooth coloured filling doesn’t last forever. Depending on how long ago you got it, they really don’t last forever. They’re made of filled plastics, the older the larger the “composite” bits are. They break down. Your teeth shifted. Again, how long has all this taken? The most common reason for teeth shifting is bone loss. You need to go to an expert cosmetic dentist, or prosthodontist who specialises in cosmetics. You may need a full head/jaw X-ray. You probably will need a crown on that tooth with state of the art ceramics. They do a plastic mock up that you wear that is an exact replica of the ceramic crown, and nothing is cemented until you are comfortable and happy. Have you had braces in your past, ever? All adults who have had past ortho will experience shifting unless they have permanent retainers. All adults experience some bone loss. As far as describing the area of concern, “it’s is near/ toward the gums. It is near/toward the biting edge”. I can only think there was a language problem? ps any dentist not clarifying what a patient means by “top of the tooth” is a bad practitioner and I frankly can’t imagine this happening because you wouldn’t know what to do, if that’s what you had to go by.

@trailsillustrated It was a bond that was fixed. I broke a tooth in 6th grade, had the bond till my mud thirties then it chipped. Had it repaired and it was perfect another 4–5 years, then I had another very mini chip, and that repair was done poorly. It left the tooth too thick, so I couldn’t bite properly. It is not like a bad bite from a filling at the top of a moler, it was the front tooth too thick. Moreover, when filing he hit my good tooth. I though it felt that way, but didn’t stop him. Now that tooth is narrower than the tooth next to it looking at it from on. For the first time in my life, food was getting caught all the time, my front lip get sore, and when I wake in the morning my teeth feel like after having braces tightened. This all was obvious within a day after getting it fixed, got worse, I was having headaches daily. I don’t normally get headaches.

I finally went to the prosthodontist after a couple of years (dentists in between) who gave me significant relief by filing down how thick it was.

Yes, I had braces as a teen. Yes, my lower teeth had already very obviously shifted, even before this, and probably my top teeth too, but that was not obvious. I never had a bite problem ever. It began the day after the second bond repair. I know dentists won’t want to believe I had no troubles before, but if I made the effort I could find photos dated just before the procedure, and I took photos after. I don’t know if there is a way to measure the tooth by an X-ray, but if so I could prove he filed my good tooth, my left one, and the right one is now wider. That is not from shifting, teeth don’t grow or shrink a millimeter or two wider or narrower from left to right.

I had a panoramic done not too long before that. I should get my full chart from them if they haven’t shredded it yet. I don’t know the laws for keeping dental files. Last time I saw him would be maybe 4 years now?

My front bonded tooth was made a little wider looking at it from the front to fill the space and I think it looks pretty bad. What makes it worse is now my teeth don’t fill my smile on the sides, the teeth have been forced to cave inward. It’s millimeters, but enough to notice.

Close your mouth to the resting position, and then imagine your front teeth too thick and shift your bottom jaw back away from the front. See how it pulls on the top teeth?

I know dentists will want to think it’s normal shifting and I’m being bothered by minor cosmetic things, but I know exactly what happened to me from one day to the next. I’m not saying you are one of those dentists, I’m confident if you had examined me you would have seen the problem, and especially if I had been your patient for a few years, you would know I never complain about pain from my teeth or how the teeth look. I did go back to him within a week saying my bite was bad. I complained about it again after living with it a few months. Then I went to another dentists a couple months after that. Then eventually went to another dentist probably almost a year after that. Then finally the prosthodontist months, maybe almost a year later.

Well, after multiple occasions in which a doctor either tried to give me antidepressants for an actual issue unrelated to depression, or did something SO stupid that I could have sued for malpractice, I came to realize that many docs are idiots in it for the money.

How do I cope? I no longer trust people in the medical field, for the most part.