Dentistry: A primative career

Having two orthodontist appointments and one dentist appointment in one day got me thinking (and exhausted). I've had this thought before, but it's beginning to really sink in. Dentistry and orthodontics are very primative careers.

Look at it this way. Anyone who's seen "Castaway" with Tom Hanks can get my drift quite easily. Tom had no way of getting rid of a painful tooth with the exception of taking a rock or whatever to knock it out. Not entirely different than professional dental work. I had to update my files at my dentist office today and I checked Yes in the box "Do you have a fear of dental work?" Who doesn't?

So I settled into the hygienist's chair where she did a cool scan of my mouth to tell me if I have oral cancer (I don't, yippee). Then she settled into scraping away the plaque from my teeth with a metal hook. Ok, I admit, it's much more advanced than a rock, but still, hasn't society as a whole come further than this? Why can't I just have my teeth lasered clean? She has to scrape away and pick with ancient tools, digging under my gums (ouch!) and fishing around like she's mining for gold. After a good 45 minutes of this, I was sent to my second orthodontist appointment of the day (the first was to remove the wires to allow my dentist to do a thorough cleaning).

Again, pliers and metal hooks are wrenched around in my mouth like a mechanic works on a car. The assistants apologize when an instrument slips and hits my gums or my lip gets trapped in the wire as they're putting it back into the brackets. Then rubber bands are fastened around my teeth to help move them around. Are we so archaic that we use pliers and rubber bands to fix our precious teeth?

It's also interesting to see the visual displays the dentists put up to help calm the patient. Now on the ceiling of my dental office is an ad for teeth whitener. It doesn't change. It's just a lady laying in the grass smiling with perfect teeth as well as a side to side before and after display. It never changes. I have her image engraved in my mind and associate it with the anxiety of having a metal hook scraping around the inside of my mouth.

The hygienist has pictures of her children on the wall as well. With my head turned towards her, I focus past her head and onto the picture of her little boy on his hands and knees in a grassy field. As he gets older I wonder if he'll feel offended knowing that hundreds of people now associate his picture with cruel dental work. I stare at the picture the whole time, every time I go in there, while scraping sounds rattle in my head with an occasional scrape at the gums. There he is, a cute little brown haired boy in sweatpants, smiling at my pain and anxiety. Just like the murderous Chuckie doll from the movie Child's Play.

Who grows up with the dream of one day becoming a dentist or orthodontist? Do people yearn to dig around in wet slippery mouths, scraping and prying at enamel, full of apologies, spit flying everywhere and learning the language of some one talknig with a fist and a few metal instruments in their mouths? Is this what people become when they realize a life of crime and torture will only send them to prison? I guess it's the only legal way psychopaths can unleash their fury on unfortunate victims.