Adel The Terrorist

I got a call this morning from Idayu as I drove up to the clinic. She said that Adel, a patient we had seen a year ago, was in clinic with a swelling and was waiting to see me. I told her I was just about to park the car and to make Adel comfortable.

When I walked in the clinic, Adel who was disguised as a terrorist was indeed waiting! The poor student from Yemen looked like a terrorist all wrapped up to hide his huge swelling due to an infected tooth!

I told Adel that his disguise actually made more people look at him. The poor guy had been nursing the swelling and the resulting pain since yesterday and hadn’t been able to sleep or eat. The fact that his house mates (all students from Yemen) had been laughing at him since his face started to swell up, didn’t help matters.

From his dental records, I told Adel that the tooth had been scheduled for an extraction or a root canal, just over a year ago and I could not take it out until the swelling goes down and the infection is controlled as the injection to numb it wouldn’t work and there will be a lot of bleeding. Besides the infected are would take a much longer time to heal.

I drained the pus from his abcess and gave him antibiotics, pain killers and medicine to reduce the bump. As he hadn’t eaten from yesterday I told him to at least get some porridge or milk in his belly before he took his medicines or else he’d end up with heartburn too. To this he replied he didn’t like milk and he only ate french fries! Sigh.

I practically threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t eat! I ended up giving him packs of The Cambridge Diet (a meal replacement source) so he would at least get some nutrients.

Moral of the story ….. deal with the problem teeth as recommended by the dentist and you won’t have to wrap yourself up, starve and be miserable!!

Poor Adel.