A Very Lost Tooth

After 33 years of excruciating ear pain, infections and ultimately deafness, Stephen Hirst of Great Britain finally has relief.  At a recent medical visit a nurse spotted and extracted a baby tooth from his ear canal.  Both patient and nurse were baffled as to how the tooth got there. 

But honestly, folks?  In a world where kids wind up in emergency rooms with M&M’s stuck up their noses, it’s not too difficult to speculate as to how a baby tooth could have gotten into Mr. Hirst’s ear, now is it? Yet that was the prevailing question amongst the medical staff at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.

The Maven believes the more troubling question is how something like that could have been missed for 33 years!!  Mr. Hirst reports countless “hospital appointments” since age 14 spent looking for the source of his pain and infections.  Did no one ever bother to use an otoscope on poor Stephen and look in his ear?  How about an x-ray?  Teeth show up realllllly well on x-rays!  Then, with the advent of CT scans or MRI….nothing there?  Were those tests deemed too expensive for someone who was diagnosed with what seemed like chronic otitis media?

Hirst stated, “When I was younger I used to just sit and bang my head on the wall because it hurt that much. I would be screaming in pain, that's not exaggerating… I've lost count of the times I have been examined but no one spotted the tooth.”

Good Gravy!  If that was The Maven’s son, she’d move heaven and earth to find out why he was in such horrible pain.  If one doctor didn’t find the reason The Maven would move on to the next doctor and then the next.

The Maven hopes that, like many most stories written by today’s journalists, some key facts are missing from this report.  As told, it’s not the prettiest piece of advertisement for a healthcare system.  Despite Her great affection for the Brits, The Mave is not a big fan of the NHS model of healthcare.  However, She remains hopeful that the real story is more reflective of the journalists ineptitude and less so of the incompetence of the NHS.