An English man recently shocked his whole country after claiming to have been pulling off his own teeth for over 10 years because he could never book a dentist appointment.

David Sergeant, a former butcher from Leeds, in the United Kingdom, claims that he has been forced to use pliers or his bare hands to pull out painful teeth due to being unable to see a professional dentist. The 50-year-old man said his financial situation makes it impossible to get private care, so he has had to get an appointment through the state-funded National Healthcare Service (NHS), which hasn’t really been working out too well. He has had to wait so long to see a dentist that he has pulled out several of his teeth over the past decade.

Photo: Caroline LM/Unsplash

“I can’t get an NHS dentist, for ten or 15 years. I’ve tried referrals from the doctors and there’s nowhere that will take me,” Sergeant said. “I wait until the tooth is loose and then loosen it and loosen it and loosen it and pull it out myself. I have used pliers in the past, like big ones, but most of the time I just use my fingers.”

As you can imagine, pulling out your own teeth is a particularly painful affair, especially when you’re already under a lot of pain from cavities or oral infections. However, Sergeant says he has been able to pull-though the ordeal with some beer and a couple of painkillers.

“I have a couple of beers and fill myself up with ibuprofen and out it comes. Next morning there’s a bit of blood,” the former butcher added. “It doesn’t feel very good. At the end of the day, I’m having to pull my own teeth out when I should have somebody looking after me.”

David Sergeant’s case recently went viral in the UK, once again bringing the state of the NHS-funded dentistry system into the spotlight. UK tabloid Mail Online claims that the situation is worse than ever, with thousands of NHS dentists having quit diring the pandemic in order to go fully private. This has apparently been caused by a lack of Government investment, and it has left people with the options of going private – with huge financial costs – go without dental care, or, in extreme cases, do their own procedures.

Interstingly, this isn’t the only such shocking case to come out of the UK. Back in 2016, we wrote about a man who ended up operating on himself after having been put on a waiting list by the NHS and having his surgery cancelled twice.