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Will I have to roll into his arms?
The drama spreads to all the other dental chairs and suddenly dentists and nurses and admins are running in every direction. Shouting. Everyone has their mouth open, not just the patients. It’s Toothmageddon in there.
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Of course, today’s dentistry is light years away from the work of the world’s first dentist, Hesy-Ra, who treated pharaohs and pyramid workers alike – specialising in extractions (and gemstone grills). Dentists today go the extra mile to make their clients feel happy-er. They put tellies on their ceilings and posters of monkeys on the walls to distract us. They give us dark goggles to block out the light or anything that resembles a sharp steely object coming down to land on our tissuey tarmac.
I once had a dentist who’d do anything not to say “injection”. “Just a little prickle” she’d say. Or “a little sting” or “a little jab”. Everything was “little”, except for the barn of a cavity she was about to blast out of existence. And the bill.
And they’re so considerate now. Knowing I’d just returned from a trip to India, Dr Dan chooses some soothing bansuri flute music for us to listen to, as he tucks me up in a blanket and applies Vaseline to my lips.
This won’t hurt a bit … no, seriously.Credit: iStock
A quick word on Dr Dan. Not sure if it’s his kind eyes or his readiness to laugh at my sick mum jokes or his patience when I ask if he’s ever been bitten. Fact is, he’s a delight. He gives a little yoga lesson while he’s giving you an injection. “Breathe in deeply through your nose,” he says. “Keep your shoulders down” and then “breathe out through your mouth” at the exact time he plunges the needle in a westerly direction. It’s a bit like yanking a cow’s tail before giving her a pregnancy test.
So back to the root canal treatment. It sounds fashionably awful but in fact it’s no more painful than having a filling because, and this is important, your mouth has been numbed. And once your mouth is numb, you may as well entertain the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in there because you feel nothing beyond some bumping and hear nothing beyond some drilling. Which has now stopped.
And this is where I really love my new young dentist. Does he panic? No. Does he dash next door for a cappuccino? No. He quietly disappears into the utilities room, flicks a few switches, adjusts a few doodads and has the entire set of dental chairs up and running in 20 minutes. It’s a software problem, see? Nothing to do with electricity. Breathe in, now out.
I’m not sure if Dr Dan’s a new-age dentist or a computer nerd or just a wunderkind. Whatever. I have total faith and I’ll gladly attend his bar mitzvah.
Jo Stubbings is a freelance writer and reviewer.
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