EDIT; I can’t reply to everyone individually but thanks for all the suggestions! Opiates are out of the question, doctors here will only prescribe those in terms of absolutely extreme suffering or end of life care. I also don’t particularly feel interested in developing a hard drug habit. Diclofenac and such are available but also only on separate prescriptions, I’d have to visit another doctor for that. I’m well stocked on paracetamol & ibuprofen, and apart from that, lots of ice cream, pudding & soup :)

Also, since a fair few people seem to doubt the veracity of my story, here’s the 22 extracted teeth (the other 10 were already gone in previous extractions).

  • BlizzardEnglish
    60·
    22 days ago

    Did your dentist not give you that advice?

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.worldOP
      2674·
      22 days ago

      Actually no, I found the entire process to be incredibly rushed and the communication was bad to nonexistent. But that’s “free healthcare” for you. Even in places where medical issues don’t bankrupt you, the only way to get a truly seamless experience is to go to a private clinic and pay everything out of pocket.

      • daddyjones@lemmy.world
        1112·
        22 days ago

        Just to say - this has not been my experience of free healthcare. Not all of it has been great, but most of it has.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
          341·
          22 days ago

          Hey, you can come here to the states, pay out the ass for it, even with insurance…and still have the same experience. Long waits, lack of communication, and Doctors that are so booked they give you the once over in 10mins after you have waited on them for hours…

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
        7·
        22 days ago

        Dental eugenol, it’s a fairly powerful local analgesic made from clove oil. Some people have adverse reactions to it and so it isn’t used as frequently as it used to. So I would recommend applying it in a small test area before applying it more liberally.

        You can buy it online fairly cheaply.

        • int_not_found@feddit.org
          112·
          21 days ago

          Because they state that free healthcare is automatically bad healthcare. Which, as a general statement, is just wrong.

          Free Healthcare is a broad term for dozens of different policies in dozens of different countries. Just because OP’s specific country has problems, doesn’t mean that every single implementation of free healthcare leads to bad healthcare. Also a similar rhetoric is used as a dog whistle by the far right in the USA.

          Additionally they are using a specific question about their situation, to rant about a much broader topic. This soapboxing called behaviour is generally frowned upon.

          So the comment in isolation is wrong, attention seeking & looks like written by someone who is something between a manchild, that is unable/unwilling to present a nuanced opinion, and a nazi. All of which are imho criteria for a downvote.

        • Kyrgizion@lemmy.worldOP
          82·
          21 days ago

          Lol there’s even people accusing me of making it up or going to an illegal dentistry.

          If you really want I can post pictures, but I warn you; they really aren’t pretty. I suppose I could also post the two or three pages of “aftercare” I got.

          All in all, it seems a case of “This hasn’t ever happened to me, and it’s not my experience, so therefore, it can’t have happened to anyone, ever”. Whatever floats your boat.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
          4·
          22 days ago

          idk man, that’s been my experience in Finland between the public and private healthcare. The public one is completely free, yes, but it’s also sometimes rather shit in some things. It’s usually pretty good for most things, and free cancer care and whatnot. But psychiatry, dentistry, eh… not as great.

          Buut… the difference between a public and a private dentist is night and day. I have gotten good care in the public system as well, but I’ve never got bad care from private, whereas I’ve had horrible experiences in the public system. A few good ones, but mostly bad.

          I have free healthcare, but I still dropped a grand on dentistry. For one because the public healthcare wouldn’t fix cosmetic issues, and I had a bit of dental calculus in a tooth so it looked like I always had a small piece of oregano stuck on a teeth or something. I was comfortable with money at the time so I payed for laughing gas and to all cavities and whatnot. Good service, pretty expensive. But before that I had avoided the dentist for a few years because of an extremely painful experience with the last public dentist I went to.