I am no fan of dentists. I have habitually avoided them for most of my life and, until now, I have never found one that I actually liked. I can tolerate them for a while but that is about it.
I doubt that anyone enjoys going to the dentist. That isn't what I'm talking about. I also don't have a fear of dentists like some people do. I just don't like them as a general rule.
In my case it goes back to my early formative years when I was sent to the St. Louis University Dental School clinic for my first actual dentist visits. This was a room about half the size of a football field filled with dentist chairs and dozens of pimple-faced dentist wannabes with outdated tools and no skills to speak of. It was the luck of the draw....you waited for your name to be called and then they turned you over to this kid with a drill. Of course you had to have x-rays first so that took a while as they stuffed 3-by-5 cards in your mouth, told you to bite down and then ran out of the room. When the kid started drilling and smoke was coming out of your mouth there would occasionally be a "real" dentist who would walk up and peer into your mouth, usually with his hands clasped behind his back. At the time I thought that this was the guy who
was going to save me. I hopefully waited for him to take the drill away from the kid and do the job himself. Instead, he would grunt and walk away. Finally he would come back and shove a mirror in my mouth and look at the kid and say "OK, that's a 'C' ". My drill-jockey got a 'C' on my tooth. At lunch time they would all go to lunch and you were turned loose for an hour. You were supposed to drag your lip out to the waiting room or maybe go find something to eat. Paul ate part of his tongue when he actually did go find something to eat...you can't tell when you are chewing your tongue when it is numb. (The picture looks much better than it did in the 1950s but it still gives me the creeps.)My other early experience had to do with orthodontists. The clinic had a back room where they kept the junior orthodontists. They seemed to be under some type of supervision because you didn't actually get to talk to them. The "real" orthodontist would look at your teeth and ponder what to do. You have probably seen the sculpture of the chimp pondering the human skull? That was the same expression. Then they would decide to take an impression of your teeth. This is really fun. They have these little iron horseshoe shaped troughs filled with some kind of latex-plaster goo and they shove your teeth into it and make you sit there until it hardens. Then they try to get it unstuck from your teeth and then pry out of your mouth. They do one for the top and one for the bottom so you are ready to confess to anything by the time they are done. Then they tell you to come back at a later date when they reveal the plaster model of your teeth. I was mostly interested in getting a look at that C-quality filling that the child-dentist did but that, apparwntly, wasn't the point. My teeth are crooked...big deal. I knew they were crooked because my mom used me as the crooked teeth poster child and made sure everyone in the neighborhood got to see how crooked they were. This was one of her favorite ice-breakers when she met strangers. She would trot me out to show off my crooked teeth. I told her and the clinic where they could stick their braces after that second visit. They had display cases chock full of plaster casts of peoples' teeth so I guess that is where mine are now. I have no interest in going to find out. Decades later I was sent by another dentist to have a consultation with an orthodontist. This guy was one of the best in the city and after making a new set of impressions he told me that my teeth were better off being crooked than having them realigned to the point that they didn't bite properly. That was what I wanted to hear.
I must have gotten the message across that I didn't want to go back to the SLU dental clinic because my mom took me to a dentist she heard about at her work. This guy was down in the black ghetto somewhere...an old Jewish dentist that had been at the same place since before Moses came down off the mountain. By that time I had broken of a corner of my front tooth. (That is a reoccurring theme in my encounters with dentists). This guy proceeded to fit me with a crown to patch up the broken tooth. Again, this took a couple visits and when I went to get the crown put on it was gold and about as big as your thumb. Once it was on my tooth I though it looked hideous -- maybe I could go be a pimp somewhere but I knew I could never go swimming again because the thing would drag my head under water. The crown finally fell off a few years later and I was thrilled to have it gone. I could open my mouth again without looking like an oncoming freight train.
Later on, I only found one dentist that I thought I was going to like but he left town in the middle of the night and disappeared. He didn't even tell his office staff that he was leaving.
I usually went to Joanne's dentist if I had to go. She had a knack for picking them. One guy broke a hand drill off in her tooth while doing a root canal and didn't tell her. He finally did tell her but he attached the crown to the stuck portion of the drill bit. This is the same guy who was late to one of her early morning appointments because he was up all night in his attic stomping raccoons to death. The raccoons had invaded his attic so he went up and stomped them to death. I don't think I would have allowed him to work on my teeth that day.
Her next dentist was better but even he had a screw loose. Every time you would go he would have some new outlandish story or conspiracy theory. Space aliens, Nessie, black helicopters, Vatican or masonic crypto-fraternities and wing-nut politics usually were the topics of discussion. He wasn't a bad dentist but you never knew what mood he was going to be in. Once his marriage broke up it got even worse. Sometimes he didn't talk at all. Sometimes didn't feel like working on your teeth so he would mess around in your mouth for a while and then have you make another appointment.
So now I have gotten to the point, at sixty years of age, that I need some serious dental attention. I have old fillings and a few broken teeth. I decided not to go back to either of these last two guys and started searching for a new dentist. I found one and he seems like he will be OK. Nothing unusual surfaced at the first appointment. The guy is experienced and has modern equipment. He actually reminds me of our vet in a way...which is a good thing. One other similarity with the vet is that this is going to cost an arm and a leg and who knows what else. He seems to think that I don't have a tremendous amount of dental problems but so far the anticipated bill is well into four figures.
I don't plan on re-visiting this topic unless things take a turn for the worse. So far -- so good.
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