Brace Yourself

I haven't been to the dentist in probably over 2 years. And I went this morning. The following is a true story...

So there I am sitting in the waiting room of a small, modernized dentist office. I'm filling out the little info/bio sheet thingy that they give you with a clipboard. They want to know the name of my previous dentist and my current physician. Well, I don't know their names. So I have to turn back on my phone (they make you turn it off when you walk in....I guess phone calls disrupt their fancy high-tech equipment) and call my wife. Because she knows. And I don't. And now I feel like I'm 14 again.

They bring me back to the room for X-rays and drape that enormous, heavy X-ray protection bib on me. Now, if this thing is supposed to protect my body from X-rays, why aren't they putting anything on my head, especially since they aim that cannon-like X-ray thing 2 inches from my face. I'm sitting there the whole time wondering what kind of brain damage I am undergoing. And meanwhile, as they electro-shock my skull, I'm "trying to hold still" while biting onto those hard, plastic, gum-piercing pieces of film. Why must she position them in a way that lifts up my tongue and presses the razor-edge corner of the plastic 3 inches deep into the sensitive flesh underneath? And why does she honestly need 30 different X-rays?

The main dentist comes in next. She's got to be in her mid-twenties. It is a strange feeling when the professional doctor working on you is younger than you. So she pulls out that gnarled metal hook thing and begins probing into my gums and as she's doing so, she's dictacting some dentist jargon to the other nurse who is filling out my chart. I don't know what they are saying, but I know it doesn't sound good. "We've got a ruptured indocresin on 38....we're going to need to bridge up the mesial on 21....we've got bleeding around the decayed endroscular at 29." Not good when they use works like "ruptured" and "bleeding." I at least know those words.

After they do their thing, the main dentist (the teenager) sits down and reads the damage. She didn't even give me a round figure as to how many cavities I had. She just said "numerous." I have to go back three more times just to fix them all. Three more times. And three hundred dollars later. Not good.
And then she says that she's going to have to do what is called "a deep cleaning," one that involves novacane (yes!!) and drilling. It turns out that some of the "pockets" in my teeth are way too deep and that if she can't fix them, I'll need to see a specialist. Otherwise I risk having my teeth fall out. Not good.
And then she recommended "adult braces." She pulls out the little model set of skeleton teeth to show me what this "new technology" is capable of. No more primitive hunks of metal plastered onto each tooth and tethered with rubber bands, pulling the teeth into their desired position. Oh no. "Adult braces" are basically two clear, plastic retainers that you wear over your teeth. I can only wonder how much this is going to cost. And the sad thing is, I had braces in middle school. More shame. More humiliation. More expenses. Not good.

Before I leave they make me sit through two short videos. One on how to brush. And one on how to floss. I was officially 14 again. "Hold the brush like this....vibrate the brush in your hand gently as you go in clockwise rotations....brush at least two times a day." On the flossing video they actually taught you how to pull out the string and wrap it around your fingers. I'm surprised they didn't play another video on how to tie my shoe.

This year I'm dressing up as a dentist for Halloween. Crentist.