Right away, I noted a few things missing from this dental visit. Where was the buzzing? Where were the shrieks of terror? Where was poor little Seymour and the torturous Orin Scrivello, DDS?
This was not the dentist office experience of old.
They had real linen in the bathroom — that’s right, real, cloth napkins — for heaven’s sake.
Staffers doled out bottled water, office tours and hand massages.
“What the what?” is what I thought of this spa-like oral hygiene utopia.
I was unprepared for this pleasant place void of bloodthirsty tooth yankers.
A revolution had occurred in the years since my unofficial ban on dentist offices began. (I ban lots of stuff.)
There had clearly been a push away from inflicting oral agony and towards hippy-dippy, soothing dental happiness.
Save for the X-ray thingies you have to bite down on, the Midevil instruments have been stored and replaced with computers and lasers.
Who knew spending hundreds of dollars in the fight against tooth decay could be so close to yoga?
I abandoned the dream of a healthy smile after holes were poked in my mouth and pocketbook in a dental office a few years ago.
That, of course, was not the only upsetting experience with a dentist office. I dare only say “wisdom,” “tooth” and “extraction.”
A growing fear that calcium deposits from my teeth were traveling down my throat to my heart — a friend told me she read an article about it — is the real reason I decided to once again give clean teeth a try.
As I laid there being romanced by dentistry, I caught myself longing for the pain.
Now whose the maniac, me or the dentist?
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