I have a tooth that hurts

I woke up in the middle of the night because I have a tooth that is bothering me. I seem to remember asking the dentist last time I was in about getting it pulled out because it was sore, but he said that it should wait.

They're wisdom teeth, you see, and my dentist wants them to grow in so that he can just pull them out himself instead of sending me to a dental surgeon to have them cut out. The only problem with that is that I have a really small mouth, so small that they had to pull 6 teeth out to make room to straighten the rest. I'm quite afraid that letting the buggers grow in naturally will move them around again and the last thing that I want is to spend my tuition money on getting braces again.

So my dentist and I disagree, I'm now losing sleep and it's not quite noon yet and I'm pretty close to consuming the maximum recommended doseage of ibuprofin written on the bottle. Thankfully the drugs are taking the edge off of it, however my ear is still itchy. Does your ear ever get really itchy when your throat is sore? Mine does. It's like that, only tooth related.

Perhaps I'm just being a little paranoid, but I know that my dad ended up in hospital with a nasty infection because no one thought to take his wisdom teeth out and seems to me my mom's became impacted and she needed some really fantastic painful surgery to remove hers because they became fused somehow to her bones. (My parents don't have pregnancy or wedding horror stories, only dental ones.)

But seeing as I share a lot of genes with them, is it not reasonable to assume that I have a higher chance of having these weird dental conditions and mishaps than the average person? I explained my reasoning to the dentist and he doesn't listen. He's got dollar signs in his eyes.

There are about 12ish dentist's offices along the same three blocks or so near my parents' street. They're like vultures, they are, especially if you've got dental insurance. It seems like they'll find every possible reason to get you in the chair, and a lot of times, at the end of your appointment you'll find that they did more things than you asked for, and then you get charged for it all.

I don't trust the bastards. We wouldn't have this problem if dental care was publicly funded.

Am I the only one who's noticed that since the government stopped funding eye exams the optometrists have had to resort to using scare tactics, making up scary stories about sudden blindness and stuff? It's kind of funny that we didn't hear about how we could suddenly drop dead or go blind when we didn't actually have to pay for eye exams.

Bastards.