LUV YOUR DENTIST

I love my dentist. In fact, I think I may have the best dentist in the world. I say this because I just had a marathon visit, spending almost 4 hours in the chair having a root canal, then having a crown replaced. I realize that it may be rare for people to cheer for their dentist, but mine continues to do everything necessary to make me the most loyal customer in the history of oral hygiene.

I found Dr. D through circumstance. I was doing a show with his daughter and she suggested that my partner design the children's waiting area in the new dental offices they were building. Part of the contract was some bonus check-ups and cleanings for my partner and I. My first visit was not a happy one. I received the news that my gum disease was so advanced that I was in danger of losing my teeth. This was news to me since I had been obediently having yearly cleanings and check-ups with another dentist for the past eight years. The hygienist who gave me the bad news suggested that if my previous dentist had never mentioned my receding gums, he should probably be dragged behind a car. I have the rope and am still looking for him.

So Dr. D explains my new predicament thusly: "If you think of your teeth as fence posts and your gums as the earth, right now you've got a bunch of ten-foot posts in three feet of dirt. They could start to get a little 'wiggly'." He says the word "wiggly" as though he finds the word amusing, like he might say it to one of his six-year-old patients. There is no cure for this problem outside of some rather painful and expensive surgery. As an alternative, Dr. Dave suggests having my teeth cleaned four times a year. "We can't reverse it, but we can stop it." This is not something a self employed person with no health coverage wants to hear. But appointments were made and cleanings commenced, all under the guise of the aforementioned design contract, even though the freebies and discounts extended well beyond what was originally agreed to.

The good news is that we did indeed stop the advancement of the disease. So much so that I now only go for a cleaning every 4 months instead of every 3 (and I pay for the cleanings now). The bad news is that teeth, like the rest of your body, have a way of acting up as one gets older. I developed a cavity underneath an old crown and the only fix for this is removal of the old crown, root canal and installing a new crown. Now, let's clear up a few things here. Root canals are the most feared dental procedure known to man because people associate them with pain. The pain, though, is usually caused by the symptoms leading up to the procedure, not the procedure itself. That said, I can think of more comfortable things than having your mouth jacked open for 4 hours while someone drills, saws, hammers, laminates, colour-matches and generally renovates your teeth. If, however, you do have to live through this slightly surreal experience, I can only hope for you that it will be done by someone as placid, as professional, as thorough, as knowledgeable and as gentle as my dentist.

Ooh....ooh, and did I mention that he has a machine that takes a picture of your mouth and your old crown, then turns it into a 3D CAD drawing and sends the data to a small machine that looks like a futuristic bread box that carves the new crown while you watch....in 7 minutes!!!! Oh-so-cool.

So the inside of my mouth is still a little tender and the muscles in my jaw hurt if I yawn, but I received a beautiful new crown, the benefit of a 'family discount', and some of the best medical care in the world. What's not to love?