Impressions
The Medical Intuitive
In dental school we were taught how to diagnose and treat dental disease . We honed our skills in treatment planning and practiced many different dental procedures to proficiency . Why , then , is it so hard to handle a simple toothache ?
A few years ago , a patient was referred to my office after her dentist had prepared tooth # 13 for a crown . She was symptomatic . Sounds easy enough , right ? The tooth was sensitive to percussion and cold . It must have been trauma from the crown prep . Perform root canal treatment and complete the crown . After the root canal was completed she continued to have pain . After further questioning , I discovered that her mother had been diagnosed with a brain abscess from a dental infection years earlier and it nearly took her life , according to the patient . The patient was very worried . I had my patient take more than one type of antibiotic and I told her that she was not likely to have a brain abscess like her mother . My patient continued to question the similarities .
As the weeks went by , she continued to have pain in the area of that tooth . Was it fractured or infected ? I retreated the root canal , but she continued to have pain . We took the tooth out of occlusion and she continued to have pain . As an endodontist , I have several treatment choices . Eventually I advised the patient to have apical surgery . I did not want to see her lose this tooth nor did I want her to continue in pain . I thought that periapical debridement would solve her problem as it has for so many others . At this point , I know that several of you are thinking , “ Just
Dr . Bruce R . Terry
get the tooth out already .” I completed the surgery . Weeks turned to months , and she continued to have chronic pain and she continued to assume that she had a brain abscess . I sent her to a local dentist with a cone beam machine . The images showed no evidence of problems around the tooth or more superior to the sinus or brain . Of interest , there was a small lesion on the MB root of tooth # 14 on the cone beam image that did not show on the radiograph . The patient was frustrated , the general dentist was frustrated and I was frustrated .
The dentist and I referred her to a dental pain management team to see if the pain was non-odontogenic . The patient insisted that she was not crazy and refused to go . Eventually I completed root canal treatment on tooth # 14 in a desperate bid to stop her pain . Unfortunately , it didn ’ t make a difference . Sometime later she returned to her general dentist for a cleaning . She said that she thought that her problem was from a “ botched root canal .” The dentist asked how she knew this and the patient told her that she had contacted a Medical Intuitive she found on the Internet and that this person diagnosed her problem on the phone and told her that the root canal treatment was “ botched .”
A Medical Intuitive ? What exactly is that ? I began my research into this highly specialized field of medicine . Apparently Medical Intuitives have been around for a long time . A Medical Intuitive is a psychic or intuitive counselor who specializes in perceiving information concerning the human body . A Medical Intuitive can energetically read the insides ( organs , glands , blood , etc .) of our bodies . This work is done by intuitively scanning the body for areas or imbalance that may need alignment or treatment . Oftentimes the Medical Intuitive will be able to explain the connection of the energy to an emotion or an event causing the illness . Intuited information can then be provided to the client ’ s medical doctor and / or health-care professional for further evaluation and discussion of possible treatments . Many Medical Intuitives work with ( or are ) medical doctors themselves .
I am open minded and always willing to think outside the box . I believe that Uri Geller was able to bend spoons in the 1960s . Do a YouTube search if you don ’ t know Yuri . I believe that the Dog Whisperer can tell what a dog is thinking . But , I am not sure a stranger listening to a patient on the phone can know that a root canal was “ botched .”
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May / June 2010 • Pennsylvania Dental Journal
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