"Tim Whatley was one of my students, and if this wasn't
my son's wedding day, I'd knock your teeth out, you anti-dentite bastard."
- Seinfeld, the Yada Yada.
What is with people and their fear of dentists!? After that
attention grabbing headline followed by a rather flimsy segue, here is a fascinating (not)
story about my recent trip to the dentist.
I just had a dentist appointment with a new dentist and I
thought the lady who was interviewing me was the assistant, not the dentist, as
most dental assistants are women. So I'm answering her questions thinking: it's
nice to have this chat but the real questions will come when the dentist comes
in, not realising I was talking to the real dentist! When I realised she was the dentist I was too embarrassed to mention it.
Anyhow, it wasn't that embarrassing a slip up because I did
answer all of her questions candidly and openly, so no harm done, but you can
imagine my surprise when suddenly she reaches for the tools and starts looking
in my mouth.
Also there was another person there, a dental assistant who was
indeed a woman, yet that still didn't clue me into the fact that the woman I
was talking to was the real dentist! Oh well.
In retrospect I realise that my
dentist was the one wearing white, while the dental assistant was wearing
something blue. So I know for the future: the one in white is the dentist (regardless of gender).
I told them I've got a huge cavity on my right side -- I
felt it there a few days ago. I was picking some food out of my mouth and felt
what I thought was a 1mm wide cavity along the length of the top of one of my
top back molars.
When I looked at it in the mirror it was brown. I thought: my
god how did such a big cavity form so quickly without me noticing?! And I
confessed to my dentist my sin of not brushing my teeth consistently before bedtime.
I thought: my oral sins have come back to haunt me. She took one look at it and said: that's
tartar.
I was embarrassed for the second time in this dental
appointment. I had mistaken tartar build up for a huge cavity! After a thoroughly
professional clean my mouth was sparkly and spanking new, the tartar gone. I
had freaked out over nothing!
It was good to get a new dentist though and actually I think
she was better than my old one who was rougher and always scraped all of my
teeth hard with a metal pick. This lady
just looked at my teeth for the initial inspection. (I suppose she would have been on the
lookout for holes as she scrapped the tartar off.)
I go to the dentist at least once a year nowadays. But I had a naughty period where I didn't see
one for eight years. I didn't know you had to go to one regularly to get the tartar
scrapped off your teeth, and that you can't scrape it off yourself.
Worst of all, at the beginning of that eight year dentist-hiatus the last dentist I saw frightened
me into not brushing well along the gum line because, he said, once you scrape
off your gum cells they never grow back.
So I tended not to brush thoroughly near the gum line, which
weakened my enamel near the gum line leaving me with a vulnerability to
cavities ever since. I would have been about 16 years old when I saw that
dentist, and then I didn't see one until I was 24.
Funny thing about that dentist was, he said I wasn't making
consistent eye contact with him and he took me through a guided meditation until I
would look at him with a consistent stare.
The appointment went for a long time
as a result, so long that there was no time for my father, who was also due to
see him, to have his appointment. When my
father and I left I didn't have to say anything to him about the weirdness of
the guided meditation incident and he said: I don't think we'll go to this
dentist anymore, and we didn't!
