A Bridge Too Far or Drilling Time

Dentists are, for all intents and purposes, greedy, lying assholes, who I wish, for the love of God, I'd never have to go to again. Of course, I'm not that lucky but if I go back between now and five years from now, it'll be a cold day in hell.

It all started when I went to the dentists for a checkup/cleaning/whatever. I haven't been since my sophmore year of college (about five years, maybe a little more) and I was worried because, given the amount of time between visits, I thought my teeth might not be the perfect pearly whites they once were. I brushed religiously, especially the week before the oppointment, but I didn't floss. I mean, who has the time to floss. I don't think I even remember how. The mouth seemed pain free and copasetic going in, but you never know.

After an hour in the waiting room with three devil children who I tried to ignore, they call my name take me back the chair of dential death and tell me that, since it's been so long, they want to do the full workup. I had full mouth x-rays done with the lead appron sprawled across my torso, which I'm convinced does nothing. My head is getting pelted from point blank range with x-ray waves but lets protect his body. It's ok, the body will be fine without the head. What the fuck? The cleaning went well, only receiving one blood transfusion and the standard, "you have some tarter build up, you need to floss more" speech from the dental hygienist. Another hours past since they took me back and I thought I was in the clear only needing the a okay from the denist. The dentist calmly stroles over to check me out, sits down for two seconds without address in me, promptly looks at the x-rays and proclaims that I had a cavity on the bottom set of teeth, right side. Son of a bitch! I was so close to pulling it off, I thought. Long story short I had to make another appointment to come back and get it filled.

A month goes by, without any pain or sensitivity in the tooth that supposedly has a cavity, and I head back for my second appointment. To be honest, I was worried that the cavity was going to be like one of those things were a person has cancer but feels perfectly fine, then finds out about the cancer during a random checkup and drops dead two months after. The body has an amazing ability to ignore problems including the sound of the alarm clock this morning, which caused me to be late for work (not really a big deal, but still). I figured as soon as I knew about the cavity it would start to hurt, but I got nothing. I'm sitting in the chair waiting for the drilling to commence when the dentist starts looking around in my mouth at the tooth in question. She also examines another tooth that apparently they had written down as having a cavity last time but failed to tell me about. She gets a confused look on her face and consults my file a couple of time. As it turns out, I don't have any cavities, they've magically disappeared in thirty days, never to return. Upset that she won't get to bill me for anything, she tells me that I chipped the tooth that supposedly had the cavity and that she wants to file down the spur the chip left behind and cap it as long as I hadn’t been experiencing any discomfort with it. At this point I was pretty stoked, thinking that I had come in to get a cavity filled and was instead going to get out of the fiasco with nothing more than a cap. I agreed to her treatment and she drilled the spur off my chipped tooth and capped the tooth with epoxy.

The only problem, which I didn't have immediately, is that now the tooth is really sensitive to sweet stuff and hot and cold things. Aren’t doctors supposed to fix problems and lessen pain instead of causing it? Isn't she supposed to fix the damage I do, not do the damage? I mean, I can beat the fuck out of my teeth well enough on my own. I don’t need some midget with a degree and a drill helping me out. I can chew on rocks in my own time, not have to leave the house or miss work and do the same amount of good as the dentist did.

I don't think I've ever had a pleasant experience with the dentist but it seems like each time I go now, it just reinforces the idea that these people will tell you anything to get more money out of you or the insurance company. There's a reason why you have to make dentist appointments months in advance. They're booked because they're filling the invisible cavities of hundreds of gullible sods like me. I'm never going back and when my teeth fall out at the age of thirty-five, I'll save them all and mail them to the dentist, telling her that she can fill them now if she likes.