Following is a letter that Nina sent to her Dentist. She has given me permission to post it online so others may learn from it and avoid suffering the same fate.

Dr. Dana,

I am writing this letter to inform you of the consequences of my visit to your office which took place on 2/08/05 following a procedure of having two existing Amalgam fillings removed and replaced with new materials.

I walked in that day to your office a reasonably healthy 27 year old weighing at about 127lbs. The procedure that you preformed involved drilling out the two amalgam fillings (It is common knowledge that these unsafe fillings contain mercury.) Thus by drilling the amalgam fillings out you have exposed me to the dangerous vapors of this metal and I have also swallowed trace amounts of particles during this procedure as no special care has been taken to remove these dangerous fillings in a safe manner. Directly following this procedure and the following few months, I had started to experience a number of symptoms that include: insomnia, head pressure, nausea, chest pain, digestive problems, diarrhea, kidney pain, hallucinations, heavy sweats, heart pounding, twitching, fatigue, anxiety and panic attacks, loss of appetite followed by loss of weight (I am currently at 112 lbs). As you can imagine this has greatly impacted my ability to perform any every day functions as well as continue my employment. I have visited numerous doctors who in turn could not find an explanation for these symptoms as I did not appear to suffer from any 'conventional' illness, until I was tested for heavy metal toxicity and found positive.

At this time I ask you that you stop performing this unsafe removal procedure on any patient that come to you for assistance on such a service and to educate yourself and your staff on dangerous of amalgam fillings and consequences of having them removed improperly. I do wonder if you would have preformed the same procedure if your own child was sitting in that chair instead of me that day? I would certainly hope not.

Furthermore, even though you cannot compensate me for over 4 months of misery that I have endured and continue to endure I do ask that you reimburse me for the procedure that you did on that day as well as compensate me for my visit to the ER due to a massive kidney pain I experienced as well as my inability to continue my employment for a period of 30 days.

This is the brief estimate of those costs:

04/03/2005 Visit to the Carrollwood University Hospital ER after insurance: $221
30 day unpaid medical leave: $ 1800
The procedure you charged me for you will be able to find in your records, I believe was in the amount of $108

Finally, I would like to say that it is sad that we live in a day and age where the health industry in United States has become so profit driven, that health of the population has become only secondary motive to perform services. For example, even though your office took no precautions to dispose of my amalgam fillings in safe manner, I was repeatedly asked by your staff weather I wanted to 'buy' your procedure called 'Zoom' that is whitening and bleaching of the teeth and is purely a cosmetic procedure that most human beings do not need for any health benefit. This procedure of $400 was offered to me on more than one occasion even though I clearly had no need or interest to get this done.

I sincerely hope this letter will make you consider that the motives of your office are not entirely ethical and I asked to be reimbursed for the irreversible damage you have done to my health.

Sincerely,

Nina ---