Dentists
A few weeks ago, a filling fell out of my head. Not unusual. Simple wear and tear. Anyway, I made an appointment and Tuesday was the day. I arrived at 8:10, was stuck with Novocain at 8:12, shot the breeze with Dr. Bain until I started to slur words and had developed a serious lip leak. A few whirrs, a few twirls and I was out the door by 8:30 and eating breakfast by 9:30. No fuss, no muss, no pain.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!
My first experience with a dentist was in a Dr’s office who shall remain nameless. ( because I forgot his name and have not been able to resurrect it not matter how hard I try) His office was right across the street from the old Johnson City High School and I still wince when I drive by. In his defense, he was about 65 when I first went there at the age of seven or eight, so he probably started his practice around 1914. He apparently never replaced any of his equipment. He used a treadle drill, that he pumped furiously with one foot, occasionally switching to the other foot when he moved to get a better angle on the “problem” --ME! It is not the pain I remember. Whether what he did was not terribly painful, or he was really good at what he did I don’t know. I have no horrible memories of Novocain shots or gas or anything. What I remember was the smell of burning tooth. Yuck. Double yuck when you realize the smell is coming from your tooth. Once or twice he hit a spot that made blood shoot up into my line of vision. That was a highlight of my visits.
A few years later we graduated to another dentist who again I don’t remember. ( I’m sensing a pattern here) All I remember about him was sitting in his office, much improved over the first dentist’s, and hearing him tell my Dad that since I had buck teeth I was generating 18 gazillion tons of pressure on my teeth and if I did not get braces, they would all fall out by the time I was thirty. “ Do you want that to happen to him??”
My Dad inquired into the price and when he heard it he allowed as how if he paid that much for braces, I wouldn’t need them because I wouldn’t have anything to eat. End of braces. (Dad always felt guilty about that, which is another reason I don’t have fond memories of this dentist.} Anyway, I decided if they were falling out by thirty, to heck with it. Unless there was a gigantic hole, I never paid much attention to my teeth until a remarkable incident when we were living in Sydney, New York. I was chewing on a Mary Jane, alias “filling remover” and not surprisingly, it removed my filling. This one hurt, so I went to a local dentist who was pretty upset with me about not taking better care of my teeth. I explained they were all falling out pretty soon anyway because of the gazillion pounds of pressure and he quite literally hit the roof. Seems that was never the case and he explained quite clearly that if I took care of them, there was no sane reason I would not die at the age of 105 with all my teeth.
From that day forward I have never had a new cavity. Don’t really need any new ones given all the old ones I had. Periodically, a filling shoots out, or a tooth breaks, but so far it has been easily and painlessly fixable. So the next time you hear about the good old days, I vote that where Dentistry comes in, I’ll take these old days anytime.