Posts tagged dentist

Like I said in a former post, it’s been many years since I’ve had a close relationship with a dentist.  I felt like a first-time church goer.  Ringing through my head were thoughts about the previous dentist I attended, some of the mean people, how they only cared about money, and that I just wanted to get in and get it done.  Unbeknownst to me, there was going to be no work done on my teeth, though.  This meeting was simply a consultation to set up a myriad of visits that will fix my teeth and subsequently raise enough money so that my dentist can put her children through college.

The dentist in 2008 is far different than the dentist in 1995.  Here are some of the differences I noticed:

1. More efficient: instead of having one help desk lady that schedules, collects money, greets, and entertains the unruly children in the waiting room, my new dentist has a person that handles each one of these desks (save the entertaining of the kids… that’s just an impossibility that needs to be let go and accepted).
2. More entertaining: As a mediaphile, I like that there’s a 13 inch flat screen panel showing Bizarre Foods w/ Andrew Zimmer (side note: the food of Ethiopia did not look appealing) attached to the dentist’s chair in each room nearly 30 inches away from my face.  When I was younger, all I had to look at was uncreative posters that said things like “smile” in 54 different languages and tooth charts the size of classroom atlases.  My old dentist also played the latest and greatest from Kenny G while my new dentist had John Mayer’s cd Continuum playing.
3. More youthful: I’m not sure if this difference is something to be celebrated or feared.  My new dentist is probably in her upper-20′s, lower 30′s.  Her staff was also all under 40 (from what I can tell, anyway).  They laughed enough to seem fun but were efficient enough to maintain a comfortable level of professionalism.  Whereas before I’d fear the “you’re not flossing, are you?” lecture that included a section on rotting teeth, laziness, and the gum disease GIN-GI-VITIS, my new dentist was able to appeal to the common sense, “Come on, Nate.  Just floss.”  Ok.

I have four appointments in the next month to fix my teeth, treat periodontal disease, and finish the Bizarre Foods episode on Ethiopia.  My dentist (and probably dentists around the US) have went through a major transition that made them far less frightening and given me a sense of faux-comfort (they ARE going to mess with my teeth, after all… I haven’t completely forgotten it even with the smooth sounds of John Mayer on the radio).  They’ve changed drastically yet still are about the same business; fix teeth.  I think there’s an illustration for the church involved here.  Maybe.