The Nepalese capital city of Kathmandu is home to a peculiar shrine to goddess Vaisha Dev, the patron saint of toothache, where people suffering from dental problems nail rupee coins on an old tree trunk as offerings.

Located on a narrow street in Kathmandu, between Thamel and Kathmandu Durbar Square, the Toothache Tree is undoubtedly one of the most unusual tourist attractions in the Nepalese capital. The Vaisha Dev shrine is said to be a stump cut from the mythical tree known as Bangemudha, but it’s almost impossible to tell that it is a tree at all, as it is completely covered in Nepalese rupee coins nailed onto it. Although it is impossible to know just how old this unique shrine really is, some sources claim that it dates back to the Lichchhavi kingdom that existed in the Kathmandu Valley from approximately 400 to 750 CE. Even though modern dentistry has been practiced in Kathmandu for decades, people still come to the Toothache Tree to nail coins, hoping the goddess will release them of their dental problems.

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A Minnesota woman is suing her dentist for allegedly putting her through hell for over five hours by conducting 32 different procedures in a single, agonizing session.

Having to endure one root canal is traumatizing enough, but imagine having to sit through four root canal procedures, eight dental crowns, and no less than 20 fillings in a single session. It sounds like a nightmare and Kathleen Wilson, a Minnesota woman with severe dental problems, can attest that it truly was. In a span of just over 5 hours, her dentist, Dr. Kevin Molldrem, allegedly used about double the recommended dose of anesthetic, in an attempt to fix all her teeth in a single session. His efforts allegedly left the woman disfigured and distressed, and she is now asking for at least $50,000 in damages.

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A Turkish man had to endure over a month of excruciating pain after he had four of his front teeth extracted by a cleaner posing as a dentist at a clinic in Istanbul.

According to documents relating to a recently resolved case filed with the Istanbul Civil Court, 42-year-old Hakan Yıldırım, an Istanbul man suffering from a severe toothache, called a dental clinic in the Kağıthane district to make an emergency appointment. His call was answered by Cemal Şenaslan, who introduced himself as a dentist and told Hakan to come by the clinic in the evening to have his dental problem examined and hopefully resolved. When the patient turned up at the clinic later that day, he was greeted by Şenaslan, who bragged about being a lecturer at a dentistry university, to make Yıldırım feel more comfortable. Little did the poor man know he would soon endure the most painful experience of his life…

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Los Algodones, a small Mexican town of about 7,000 people, has the highest concentration of dentists per square mile in the world and is famously known as Molar City.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Los Algodones every year, but they don’t come in search of sandy beaches, they come for veneers, root canals, and dental implants. Of the roughly 7,000 inhabitants of Los Algodones, about 600 are dentists and the four main streets of the town are full of dental clinics offering a variety of services at a fraction of the cost in the United States. Between November and April, the population of Los Algodones almost doubles, as the tiny town is overrun by US tourists, but also some from Canada and even as far as the UK. Despite the stiff competition between dental clinics in the small Mexican town, demand often exceeds supply when it comes to dental services.

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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.

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As if we needed another reason to be scared about going to a dentist, it seems those terrifying drill bits can do more than bore through teeth, they can get lodged in your lungs.

Imagine going to a dentist for a routine procedure like getting a tooth filled, and then hearing that you might have to have part of your lung removed because of a dental drill bit. That’s exactly what happened to Tom Jozsi, a 60-year-old man from Illinois, this month. He was at the dentist getting a tooth filled, and the next thing he knows he is being told that he swallowed a drill bit. That would have been bad enough, considering that the sharp metal part could have pierced his intestines, but a CT scan later showed that he hadn’t swallowed the drill bit, he had inhaled it, and it was now lodged in his lung.

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A Wisconsin dentist was recently found guilty of intentionally damaging his patients’ teeth so he could charge them more after fixing them.

61-year-old Scott Chamolli faces up to 10 years for each of his five healthcare fraud charges, and a maximum of five years for two other charges. The experienced dentist allegedly made millions by purposely drilling or breaking his clients’ teeth and then charging them extra to fix the damage. According to prosecutors, after causing the unnecessary damage, Chamoli would pressure his patients into unnecessary procedures just to boost his profit. Even though many of the victims thought their teeth were fine, they trusted him as the professional and paid for the unnecessary procedures.

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It turns out that dentistry is so easy that anyone can do it. Case in point, 25-year-old Mohamad Irwan Mohd Sudi from Kuantan, Malaysia, who used YouTube videos and dentistry magazines to hone his skills to the point where he was able to open his own dental clinic and perform various procedures.

Instead of spending six years in dental schools to pick up the necessary skills to become a licensed dentist, Irwan decided to take a different route – he learned all he needed to perform procedures like tooth extraction, teeth scaling and placing braces by watching all kinds of video tutorials on YouTube and reading dentistry magazines. It’s not clear exactly how much time he put into honing his skills, but he apparently became so confident in his abilities that at one point he opened his own unauthorized dental clinic in Perkampungan Indera Sempurna.

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