April 5, 2009
Mental over dental
By Fiona Chan
For 363 days out of every year, I'm a pretty happy camper.
The sun shines, the breezes blow, and even hearing the birds squawk loudly right outside my window can't dampen my mood.
But then - once every six months - arrives the one day I spend the rest of the year trying not to think about.
That's right: it's the gut-wrenching, bone-chilling, nerve-wracking... trip to the dentist.
In case it's not clear enough yet, I absolutely hate going to the dentist. In terms of worst-life situations ever, visiting the dentist ranks right up there with getting a pay cut immediately after you've just bought a house and a car (true story).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried about the pain. I once pulled out four teeth in one sitting in order to get braces put on.
Once you've survived that, going through drilling and filling is, like, chillin'.
In fact, the actual process of having someone jab at unseen places in your mouth with cold hard steel and ominously whirring bits is the part I enjoy the most.
I also like chatting with dentists. They're generally friendly, cheerful people who just happen to work with tools that wouldn't look out of place in a torture chamber.
It's just everything else about going to the dentist that I hate.
First of all, getting an appointment with a good dentist these days is a Herculean task on the level of, say, trying to make already stretched ends meet on a diminished pay cheque.
I hear that at some popular dentists, it's harder to book a slot than it is to make a reservation at the hottest 20-seat restaurant in town.
The trick is to plan for your next dental appointment right after your last one - that is, six months in advance. This way, you're almost guaranteed to get a place as long as you don't mind coming in at about 6.20am on a weekday.
When you do manage to make an appointment, be sure to set aside at least two hours of your day for a five-minute cleaning. If you need an X-ray, add another hour to that time. If you plan to get a filling, I would advise clearing your schedule for the whole day.
This is because no matter how punctually you turn up at the dentist's office, he will only be able to see you half an hour later.
Funnily enough, this happens even if you arrive half an hour late for your appointment. If you actually get there early, you'll have to wait an hour.
But the most dreadful thing about going to the dentist is what happens at the end of the visit.
After suffering through unspeakable oral agonies and being forced to rinse 50 times in five minutes, you are then expected to cough up a small fortune in appreciation. To this day I'm not really sure why it costs an arm and a leg to save a single tooth.
To be fair, my company offers pretty good dental benefits. Still, after the obligatory semi-annual cleanings, I only have enough budget left over for one tooth filling a year.
So, each time, I make a careful decision about which tooth I want to save, and the rest just have to wait their turn next year.
Dentists get away with all this because they are in the highly profitable business of scaring people.
Like lawyers, doctors and tax accountants, they belong to what I call the Fraternity of Fear.
All of them just have to raise an eyebrow and you willingly shove money at them to make the problem go away.
Every time he looks in your mouth and says 'hmmm', you know instinctively that what he means is 'Ah ha! I see decay and the rot will spread and all your teeth will drop out and you will die a slow and excruciating death from starvation'.
Compared to that, a few hundred dollars for a couple of fillings seems downright cheap.
On the rare occasion that a dentist can't find anything wrong with your pearly whites, he will pull out his trump card: your wisdom teeth.
The last time I went to a dentist, he told me that my teeth were healthy, but I had a wisdom tooth that should be removed.
'It doesn't look like it's going to grow and it won't impact your molar and it will never cause you any pain,' he said. 'But I think you should take it out anyway. By the way, that will be $800.'
Fortunately, some of my friends have managed to find a way around the system.
'I just don't go,' said one friend, whose last visit was five years ago. His teeth look fine to me.
So I'm seriously considering following in his footsteps. It will definitely save a lot of gnashing of teeth.
And if my teeth all end up dropping off from decay, I'll just make a replacement set of gold ones. It will probably cost less than saving the original ones anyway.
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