Least Favorite Places – Huisartsenpost

If I were to make a list of my least favorite places to be here in the Netherlands, it would be here.   The waiting room at our local huisartsenpost (kind of like outpatients, where you go outside of office hours, only … different).  I took this photo with my mobile while sitting there being miserable this afternoon.

We’ve been here a few times before like The Night From Hell, when I thought I was dying but turned out to just have heartburn and other times but I forget why.  Every time we are there I am made more miserable by being there than I was with whatever made me go there in the first place.  ugh.

Today my husband came to me and said he had something to tell me.  The look on his face put me into one of those inside panics where it feels like all my organs are trembling – hate that!  I was thinking ok this is it, he’s going to tell me he cheated on me / lost a bunch of money / is gay / wants a divorce / <enter other Jerry Springer type of marital surprise here>.   I tried to remain calm and listened.

He said he needed me to make an appointment for him at my dentist because he has a tooth that has gone bad and broken, and he can’t take the pain anymore.  Uhh, wha?!  That’s it???

After the panic and relief subsided I listened to him tell me about how this has been going on for about the last two months but he didn’t tell me about it because he knew I’d make him go to the dentist (he was so right).   Apparently, the pain has gotten so bad over the past two days that he had no choice but to fess up, even though he is panic attack type of afraid of the dentist.  Which I can totally understand after my complete meltdown when I had that tooth removed last year.

A little background on his fear… years ago, like 9 years ago when I was first living here with him, he had to have a root canal.  He was TERRIFIED because of generally bad experiences with dentists here in Holland (this is not a rare occurrence here it seems), so I went with him and oh god it was gross.   He survived it though and life went on.

A few years ago he started having pain in that area again and he went to visit the dentist I went to for my first visit years ago, that I hated passionately.  I can’t remember how it all went but there between this dude and the root canal there was two teeth removed.   Then, whatever this dentist did wrong, Xander had to have oral surgery to fix it.

So a lot of pain and a lot of procedures later, he’s not just afraid of the dentist, he’s terrified.  Hence, not telling me about this bad tooth until his head was exploding with pain.

That brings us to today.   Since it’s Sunday I had to call our local huisartsenpost and ask if there was anything they could give him to take the edge off until tomorrow.   Their reply was very helpful.

“We don’t deal with teeth.”

“I KNOW you are not a dentist but you ARE a doctor and you deal with pain, no?”

“No, we don’t deal with anything to do with teeth.”

“ARGH!!!!!”

I got a number from them for the emergency dentist, which I knew I had no hope in hell of getting Xander to go to but I thought maybe I’d get lucky.   Yeah, didn’t get lucky.   The lady who answered the phone was a total bitch and was about as useless as tits on a bull.  When I called and explained the problem she said he could get an appointment at 8:30pm (it was probably around 2pm at this point).  I asked if the dentist who we’d have the appointment with has experience with nervous patients and does he use anything against pain.

Her answer?

“I don’t know anything about that, do you want the appointment or not?”

At that point my choices were to rip her a new one or give the phone to Xander and let him try, so I handed over the phone.  He had no more luck than I did and decided he’d rather wait till tomorrow than risk going to another hack job like he got stuck with a few years ago.  Who can blame him?

So we went off to the mall to see if they might have something a little stronger at one of the drug stores (the drug stores here are different, mind you, they don’t have a pharmacy in them, so you just get the basics).  When we spoke to the lady there she couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t help us at the huisartsenpost and gave us the strongest stuff they had, which she didn’t have a lot of faith in with regard to it helping his problem.

That got our back up a bit after talking to her.  Why the doctors at the huisartsenpost refused to do anything at all.  Hell, we pay insurance, and we pay DEARLY for it.  If we can’t go and get something to make my husband able to sleep for one night (which he didn’t last night apparently), then wtf, I say – WTF?!

We ended up going back and the receptionist tried to blow us off with the ‘we don’t do teeth’ routine again… and after explaining we don’t want anything done with the TOOTH he just wants a bit of pain relief, she grudgingly made the appointment.  Not before telling us that she didn’t think the doctor would do anything to help us though.

We saw one doctor first who sat and gave Xander a bit of a ‘your own fault’ speech because he left it go so long.  Yeah, very helpful indeed.  I think the pain he’s feeling is reminder enough of what a dumbass move that was, he didn’t need her telling him.   Finally, I ended up just cutting them off and telling her that he WAS going to go to the dentist tomorrow whether I have to drag him kicking and screaming and would they PLEASE just give him something until then.

I believe I also mentioned something about if they can’t, can they please give ME something to numb the pain of dealing with him if he doesn’t get something….

She left and made us go back to the waiting room again where another doctor would come for us.   Then we went in and he looked in Xander’s mouth and gave him antibiotics and pain killers, and advice to get to the dentist right away tomorrow.

THANK YOU JESUS!!  It only took us the ENTIRE afternoon.   Never, in my entire LIFE have I ever seen or heard of anyone having to go through so much bullshit just to get a bit of pain relief.   In North America you wouldn’t even NEED to see a doctor, you could buy stuff that would be good enough for that just over the counter… and if you DID contact your doctor, they’d have the prescription written before you even finished explaining the problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong… in a lot of cases I think it’s good that the Dutch aren’t so quick to medicate, but good grief!   I came very close to having one of my famous ‘This FUCKING COUNTRY’ tantrums today, but I didn’t.  Talk about progress!