Most people don’t like going to the dentist, mostly for good reasons. The chair is usually uncomfortable, it’s a bit awkward having someone stick their fingers in your mouth, the X-ray film holders make you gag, and often you get chided for not taking the proper care of your teeth. Not that they’re wrong, it’s just that we don’t need to be reminded again of what it was like to be a kid and told to brush your teeth the right way.
These days I don’t mind going to the dentist, because I go to a practice where everyone is friendly, and I’d rather keep the crooked smile I have and not have to replace it with artificial teeth. However, three of the dentists I’ve been to in the past did nothing to really encourage proper dental health.
The first was Dr. Chantiles. He was a short man and had suffered polio when he was young. He managed to get through dental school, and you’d think that he’d be proud of that accomplishment but he did not have a very caring or solicitous attitude. In fact, he was downright mean. One time I opened my mouth by tilting my head back and he demanded angrily that I open my mouth the right way, dropping my jaw. Wow. I guess my way made him have to lean in an inch or two farther. Okay.
What made any dental visit more frightening was that, in addition to behaving like the assistant to a mad scientist, he walked like one. With his hard shoes on the tile floor he’d take a step, then drag the other foot. Progress was slow, and so was business. He’d get a phone call while working on me, and he had to go answer it since he didn’t have a secretary. (I think my mother used him because he was cheap and she could pay on time.) So it was step-drag, step-drag into the other room, a irritated-sound conversation, followed by a return step-drag, step-drag back to the exam room—and it wasn’t a short distance.
Those experiences kept me from returning to a dentist for several years. eventually I found someone who was the antithesis of Dr. C. This one was very solicitous and pleasant. He’d give me novocaine for the filling process and so the whole thing was a painless process.
However, he really should have retired sooner. In the last few years, I’d go to him every six months, and he’d probe around with a metal pick, step back and proclaim, “You’ve got a fine set of teeth, son.” And I believed him, of course. He was a doctor!
I discovered the truth when he finally retired and I went to the dentist who bought his practice. On my first visit, he said I needed two fillings and had to have three wisdom teeth—two of which were impacted, growing sideways—extracted. So much for a fine set of teeth.
The third happened fairly recently. You move to a new area, you get new health and dental insurance, and you don’t know where to go, so you pick one at random. And this guy was random. He wasn’t that good at dentistry but he was very good at being a misogynist and belittling his female assistants, treating them like second class citizens. After several visits, when a crown flew off while the hygienist was flossing my teeth—this dentists was a self-proclaimed expert at dental implants, but I guess he wasn’t so good at everything else—I found another dental practice.
Again, people don’t like going to the dentist, so it would be good if those practicing the dental “arts” would advance beyond the frontier barber and pliers in their approach.
MUSOFYR 