Sunday 1 September 2013

Jobs I havedone, part 2

I've had a few jobs, and been made redundant four times, but you pick yourself up and carry on.  In 1980-81 I worked as a dental nurse.  Back then dental nurses learnt the job as they worked.  The pay wasn't brilliant, and when I did leave it was due to the low rate of pay.  However, I really enjoyed the job, and would have stopped in the job much longer if the pay had been better.  I have even looked into training as a dental nurse in the past.
The dentist I worked for was in a small town in the middle of a large stretch of countryside.  I won't name the place or the dentist I worked for.
We had some very interesting patients.  There was a special constable who came in regularly, he was six foot plus and "built like a brick outhouse".  One day he was to have some teeth taken out, (this is back when dentists gave general anaesthetics.)  He came in and took a seat in the chair.  The dentist who was administering the anaesthetic gave it to him, (a barbiturate injection,) and then the operating dentist started to pull the teeth that needed extracting..unfortunately as he was a large man, as the dentist pulled at the teeth, the very large patient was being pulled from the chair.  This bit is a little embarrassing, the dentist asked me to sit on the patient's lap in order to keep him in the chair.  (This was not unusual...if extractions posed these sort of problems, the nurse was normally asked to sit on their lap.)
We also had a young dentist who only ironed the bit of his shirt that would be visible to the patients.
And we had a regular patient whose teeth were in a pretty good condition, but as he was a pig farmer, he was passed through the surgery as swiftly as possible.

No comments: