Thank you for teaching us to brush our teeth

OMG, I had a patient recently whose mouth seemed to be rotting away. It was a gash of brown and stench with the occasional narrow tooth remnant jutting through. The worse part, I almost had to intubate him. I ended up placing a NPA (nasal airway) and bagging him though that. There were some questions about his code status, his jaw was clench tight and I couldn't get an IV. So, I voted for fast BLS treatment and let the hospital work out how far they wanted to go with him. (Less than 10 minutes to the ER.) His pulse oximetry was 79% with a respiratory rate of 40 and unresponsive. I was able to get him up to 96% just by bagging. I've been off the last few days, so I do not know what happend to him. But, he had a bad history and seemed to be an almost-hospice patient with contractures in all 4 extremities, cancer, etc. I'll look into it tomorrow if I remember.

The point of this post was not that run...got a little off track there. But rather, I seem to have a habit of looking at patient's teeth. I guess that's from being raised by a mother who makes false teeth for a living.

I don't like the color of my teeth and my few fillings, but I do know there are some mouths out there that seem to have never felt a tooth brush. Why are they always the mouths that we need to get so close to?