ANTHONYRUGGERI.COM - Essay: Why I Hate Dentists

Why I Hate Dentists

I don't like dentists. I am not as bad as those who are given the label "dental phobic," who are scared to death of them. But my experiences, in general, have not been all that good and I just plain don't like them or what they do. Picking and poking around in my mouth. Yeesh.

My earliest memory of a dentist was the family dentist in New Jersey, when my family still lived there. I know he was Asian; his name may even have been Dr. Kim but I can't be sure. At any rate, I only remember one visit to that dentist distinctly. It was around the time I was losing the last of my baby teeth. I remember getting a shot, probably of novacaine, which hurt. I then remember one or two of my top front teeth being removed in an excruciatingly painful way. Probably it was just a pair of dental pliers ("just a pair" -- right), but it felt like a screwdriver was stuck between the tooth and my jaw like a lever so that the teeth could be forced out. It was not a pleasant experience.

When we moved away from New Jersey we found a new dentist. This dentist informed us that I suddenly had 4 cavities that needed to be filled. I had never had a cavity before that and I've never had one since, so draw your own conclusions. I don't remember much about getting the fillings, so it couldn't have been too bad. Things were settling down when suddenly the next phase of my dental life began: braces.

Now, to be fair, I did have one or two things best left to an orthodontist. Apparently, one tooth was unliked by its neighbors and decided to turn itself around a little to fit in with the crowd. Another gave up completely and decided to just stay where it was without ever growing out fully. Both were eventually resolved, but the five years I spent in braces (yes, it was that long, from 5th grade to 10th) were hardly the happiest time of my life. I did at least realize after just one try that wearing a headgear to school was possibly the most disasterous move one could make for one's social life, and I flat refused to do it. Besides for that emotional scar, everything else I experienced led me to believe that orthodontics as a practice and profession is more closely aligned with medieval torture than with modern medicine.

I certainly will never forget the first day I came home with braces, and discovered that teeth did not like being pulled and prodded and strained into some new position. They hurt. They hurst worse when you eat something like steak, which unfortunately was for dinner that first night. Two good things came out of my wearing braces, straight teeth and five years of calling the shots when it came to dinners for the first night or two after an appointment. They say that behind every cloud is a silver lining. Anyway, possibly the worst experience of this whole treatment regimen was the time the little metal rings were installed on my lower front teeth. This involved me holding my chin on one fist and the maniacal sadist, I mean, the good doctor literally hammering the rings on with a driver and a small mallet.

During my orthodontic treatment I was also introduced to the joys of oral surgery. The first time was to get that second tooth into line (literally). The surgeon used local anaesthetic and the experience was somewhat interesting, until the anaesthetic began to wear off and I learned the obvious fact that having a hole cut into your gums is painful. The second surgery was several years later. In case you haven't picked up on this yet, I have a pretty small mouth and jaw. My jaw did not have room for one wisdom tooth, and forget all four. So my one and only full anaesthesia experience was to have all four of those wisdom teeth removed. Waking up from that surgery, with a mouth full of suction tubes and stitches and cotton, was possibly the worst experience of my entire life. After about a week the holes finally stopped hurting.

So, in summary, I haven't exactly had a lifetime of experience that makes me take too kindly to the dental profession. The sooner they get those new space-age dental treatments out to the public, putting an end to sharp metal implements of pain, the better.