I finally have a good dentist
Friday January 24, 2003 - 14:12

You will be happy to hear that I went to my new dentist this week and have no new cavities.

To fully understand the import of this event, you will have to learn my dental history over the past couple years.

A few months after we moved here I went to the dentist. It was a big confederation of dentists working together in this one practice in this weird office building that was the most undentisty place ever. My dentist was really nice but maybe not quite thorough enough. She looked at the xrays and said, "You are so lucky! You have no cavities!" and then that was it. I knew there was something going on with one of my molars because I could feel a hole or something with my tongue. But since she said I didn't have any cavities, I believed her.

Then last summer Mr. Pooh and I went back to get our teeth cleaned before we went to Scotland. They'd moved to a new office because, as our dentist told Mr. Pooh, they had a mouse problem in the old place.

This time, the dentist came in and said, holding up the xray, "Wow! You have, like, five cavities!" And when she looked in my mouth she said one of my fillings was cracked and I needed a crown. But not just any crown, oh no... I needed a $750 porcelain crown. The kind of crown our insurance covers is just the crappy silver one, and they don't recommend that for their patients. They want their patients to have the best, because they care about their patients.

I said, "You wouldn't fix all this today, would you?" and she said, "Well, yes, we can start right now." So I said, "Ha ha, yeah, I'm going to have to talk to my husband. Buh bye."

Some dentists don't have their patients' best interests in mind, and I think that this is one example of that.

A few months later I went back. Our regular dentist was on maternity leave, so I had Mr. Stinky Breath, who fucked up one filling. Bastard.

But, interestingly, he only did two fillings and told me to floss to get rid of a third, and didn't even mention the other purported cavities or the crown.

So after the whole thing with him leaving a gaping hole in one tooth, and also because I felt like that dentist confederation was run more like a business than a practice, I vowed to never return there.

So this week I went to a new dentist and, after going to the strip mall of dentistry for the past two years, this place is a damn, um, outdoor mall with stucco and Spanish tile roofing, to keep with the mall metaphor. What I mean is, it's a lot better than that last craphole.

First of all, there's only one dentist there, and I was his only patient.

Second, the receptionist asked how I'd found the place and I told her who had referred me and she was all, "Oh yeah, he was just in last week."

Third, there was no stinkin' dental hygienist. The real dentist cleaned my teeth himself.

Fourth, he also removed some of the glue from my old permanent retainer that my old moron orthodontist hadn't ground off.

Fifth, he said he'd take off the permanent retainer that I still have that's been broken for a year.

Sixth, I told them I was going to Australia and the receptionist told me to tell them all about it and bring pictures to show them the next time I go in.

Seventh, they were nice.

Anyway, he said I have no cavities and that my "cracked" filling isn't cracked. I've been walking around for months thinking my teeth were all about to fall out and it wasn't true!

The moral of the story is that, if your dentist sucks, get a new one.