This happened August 19, 2024. I flew in from Colorado and was visiting my mother on Cape Cod. I…read morehad lingering sensitivity from a recently filled cavity, so I had made an appointment to see a CO endodontist upon my return. I was okay until Friday, August 16, 2024, when I had sudden, attention-getting pain. My mother took me to a local health center where a dentist looked in the area of the recent filling and said he couldn't see anything. He suggested taking Tylenol and Advil. When the pain intensified that afternoon, my mother made a lot of phone calls to quite a few Cape dental offices, none of which would see me that day nor any time in the near future. In desperation, she started making phone calls to off-Cape offices. The Endodontic Center of Stoughton told her they could see me as an urgent patient for $150 on the following Monday morning.
That weekend I experienced the worst pain of my life, and I am on disability for migraines, so I already had experience with brutal head pain. Over that weekend, I carefully followed a schedule in taking Tylenol, Advil and the few opioids I had access to. I am still absolutely stunned I was able to sleep some (in an odd, elevated position), let alone make it through that weekend. I really don't know how I did it. Also over that weekend, I developed significant swelling below my jaw (not at the location of the recently-filled tooth) which was a strange accompaniment to the pain but which did not impinge upon my ability to breathe or eat.
On that following Monday, a family friend drove me the 1 1/2 hours to the Endodontics Center of Stoughton (As I write this, I am tearing up recalling this whole ordeal. The memory is still significantly impactful.). My neck was swollen to a great extent by then. I remember crying upon checking in (and being required to pay up front) because of the pain and expected relief from this appointment. I was there at the scheduled time and after a long wait, I was shown into a room. The technician/assistant started to position the X-ray machine. I pleaded with her to have the endodontist see me. The tech told me that this was the procedure: to take Xrays first. If I had been in my right mind, I would have insisted the dentist come into the room, and if I had known that I had an abscess, I would have gone to an urgent care/emergency facility right away. Instead, I was forced to endure the incredibly painful ordeal of having full mouth bitewing X-rays taken while I had to hold that heavy metal placement thing between my teeth all over my jaw. While this is ongoing, I'm in pain and crying and still the tech does not acknowledge how difficult this is for me.
After all this (and I remember with great clarity), the endodontist walks in, and before she is even in my line of sight says, "I can't do anything with THIS" (I assume she's referring to my swollen neck). There's no greeting, no acknowledgment of me as a client or person in great pain, just a dismissive "I can't do anything with THIS," followed by "She (She might have said "You.") has/have to go to an urgent (or she might have said "emergency") care center." And that's it, no sympathy, no exam, and she leaves the room. My family friend has to ask the front desk for directions to the closest appropriate care center, which assessed the situation.
The visit to the local hospital was followed by a trip by ambulance to Boston General Hospital and surgery to remove the tooth and drain the abscess.
I don't remember the tech's name (if she was even introduced to me) at the Endodontics Center of Stoughton, but I have since identified the dentist (who I don't think introduced herself) to be Mona Haghani. After a year of trying to let go of what did and didn't happen at their office, I was still upset about what transpired, so I did call them August 12, 2025, and offered to speak with the dentist or clinic manager before I wrote a scathing review and filed a complaint. I left my current Colorado phone number and never heard back from anybody.
If Dr. Haghani had just come into the treatment room and made an attempt to assess me with even a modicum of sympathetic concern, that would have been one thing. Alternatively, she could've taken 5 seconds to look at me in the waiting room (or treatment room) at the start and told me to go to urgent/emergency care rather than wasting more of my pain-filled time and delaying actual treatment. Instead I feel like their "procedure" was just a money grab rather than an honest attempt to provide me the best care possible. Based on my experience, I would never refer anyone to their practice and would actually suggest people travel out of their way to avoid it.
