Of Dentists and Sundry

I came across a very cynical story of dentists and their trade a long time ago. It was graphically and hilariously written and had me in stitches before the end of the first paragraph. There is no way for me to reproduce its contents and retain the humor without being blatantly plagiaristic. It was a tale of one man’s horror at sitting in the dentist’s chair to have his mouth examined. He details is trepidation of the dentists mistakenly removing a wrong tooth, or using a wrong tool among his vast but apparently jumbled array of pliers, scissors, scalpels and whatever their name is.

This seems compounded by the alacrity at which the dentist reaches of these tools almost without thinking and plunging to work in your mouth. All this while you would be pinned to the chair, and like in my first visit strapped helplessly, your mouth open, unable to control the saliva clogging your throat and praying earnestly that the ordeal will be over soon.

I had the opportunity on my recent visit to the Philippines to witness a dentist at work, even though it was only for ten minutes. In fact I was the dentist’s assistant as I was given what I later discovered was the very important task of holding up the lamp as the man went about his business of firstly peering for a few minutes into the patient’s open mouth, then mumbling something to the other assistant who quickly retrieved the desired instrument.

The dentists would then go about his business of chiseling, filling and sometimes hammering the teeth while the other assistant would be spraying the patient with anesthesia.

Personally I try to delay a trip to the dentist for as long as I can. But of course there comes a time when you cannot delay the trip to the dentist any longer. Which time you need to man up or woman-up depending on your gender and pay that professional a visit.

This is what I saw in the queue that thronged the dentist’s table in the Zamboanga Del Norte gymnasium. The free dental services were sponsored by the Adventist Doctors Association and you only had to look into the eyes of the patients to see that they would have rather been elsewhere but could no longer postpone it. Their teeth were in various stages of decay with a number of people with loose teeth.

Excitedly I held the torch to the first patient’s mouth. The dentist swiftly took up his position, he growled something at his assistant who already anticipating the move gave him a thin straight steel wire with a hook at the end. I could barely look as he used it to scrape the inside of the patient’s front teeth, drawing blood in the process but continuing as if nothing had happened.

 To be honest nothing significant had happened but for my own fear of blood. He paused impatiently, swung my hand which was holding the torch towards where he wanted the light. I had looked away and my unsteady hand had wavered. I mumbled my apologies. This would be the first of many apologies in my ten minute spell as a dentist’s assistant. One more patient later, lots of blood, a thousand apologies and the growl that was becoming a pattern now, I was relieved of my ordeal.

Certainly not for the fainthearted (thats me in white)

But not after I had taken another disbelieving look at the patient sprawled on the table facing upward, her mouth agape, a torch shone in her mouth and an impervious dentist granted full access to the teeth. Her moans muffled by the tongue depressors vividly uncomfortable. However within minutes, the mouth was cleaned, the teeth fixed and although her mouth was still sore, she rose from the operation table with a beautiful set of teeth and with it a beautiful smile.

Try to stay still please!

While this made me resolve to take better care of my oral hygiene, it also showed me that certain professions perhaps do not receive as much credit as is due. It requires a great deal of credit to endlessly peer in mouths that have different problems yet retain a measure of composure and professionalism.

 My job involves working with numbers. Those unfeeling, manipulable characters. I can turn them and arrange them any way I want. I can even delete them, generate new ones and so forth. This makes me appreciate the unique courage of the dentist profession. They may not have the celebrity status of surgeons but you have to appreciate these courageous men and women (well some of them).

 As I consider what to do with my three cavities, and while the smell of burnt teeth is still in my nostrils and while my last visit to the dentist left me with aching jaw muscles (mostly due to my struggling to try and shut my mouth, it had never consciously remained open for that long before), I know when I finally pluck the courage to make the visit, I will have been left with absolutely no choice.