A city businessman is threatening legal action following what he described as a frightening ordeal at the Kitsingh Dental Clinic and Lab located at Peter’s Hall, East Bank Demerara where he went on Saturday to extract a tooth.
A very upset Nigel Reid told Stabroek News that he spent more than thirty minutes on the dental chair having his gum operated on. In the end the area bled for several hours and what appeared to be pieces of the tooth still remained. The man said that he subsequently made contact with the clinic and was told to return but he is too terrified to do so.
When contacted by Stabroek News, Coobeer Persaud, the manager, said that when the man visited on Saturday morning, the dentist advised him that the tooth was very strong and an extraction was not necessary. He said that the dentist explained that the tooth needed to be filled.
“It was he who insisted that he wanted it extracted”, Persaud stressed before confirming that the man did spend a considerable amount of time in the dental chair as it was a very difficult extraction to do. He said too that because of the type of extraction, the tooth had to be broken in two.
Persaud went on to explain that during the extraction process, a small hammer was used to knock around the affected molar tooth. He said that sometime after the man left he called and after explaining the problem was told to come back to the clinic so that an x-ray could be done to see whether there were pieces of the tooth still embedded in the gum.
Persaud told this newspaper that the man began complaining about the taxi fare he would have had to pay and was told that if he went to the clinic he would be reimbursed.
“I will advise that he come in so that we can look at it”, he stressed.
When Reid visited this newspaper, dried blood was evident at the corner of his mouth and he said he was in terrible pain.
He said that for sometime his tooth has been bothering him. He said that it became so unbearable that after leaving his Diamond, EBD home he decided to stop at the nearest dentist.
He said that the clinic he eventually stopped at is used frequently by his siblings whenever they are in Guyana so he felt comfortable going there.
According to Reid, after explaining his problem, he was given an injection and told to wait outside. After about 15 to 20 minutes he was called into the room where the dentist was and was instructed to lie on the chair and open his mouth wide.
He said the next thing he knew the dentist “push a long fine metal thing in meh teeth and start pounding away with a hammer”. According to the man, the dentist was ordering tools from his assistant “wild west”. He said too that at some point during the procedure, smoke stated coming out of his mouth and he started smelling something like chemicals
Asked by this newspaper why he did not object, Reid said that he decided to bear his pain because he wanted the tooth out. “All ah do is close meh eye and pray that it done quick”, he recalled.
He said that he finally left the clinic after paying $3000 but he had to change the cotton wool that was in his mouth several times since the area was bleeding heavily. After realizing that he was still in pain, he said he decided to look inside his mouth and saw what appeared to be “pieces of the teeth still in de hole”.
“Dat man ain’t know how to do he wuk properly…”, he said noting that he is now afraid to go back there or to any other dentist.
“I was so surprised with this treatment. There is no way someone is going to beat away at my mouth like that. Something gotta be wrong”, he said.
He said that he is currently seeking legal advice.
