Teeth so clean, you could eat off 'em!

It seems that a lot of people I know in person and via the Great Lileks's site have been visiting the dentist all at once, and probably not a coincidence. Dentists' offices, like most other businesses, had to shut down or severely limit patients for a while thanks to the Chinese Death Virus, and are just now getting caught up. As I write this, it is late Monday morning and I am leaving for my own checkup in a couple of hours. 

Current status: Worried; bug bite on ankle that will drive me nuts during the appointment; flossed recently; no dental insurance whatever.

The thing is, I am sure I have a cavity on the side of one tooth. When I was at the dental mill last year they warned me about this but wanted to take a wait-and-see approach. Well, I waited, and now I am about 100% sure it's a cavity (or caries, as the dentists insist on calling them). So I called this new dentist, a fellow in private practice, and had to wait over a month for this appointment. I guarantee the hole did not get better in this time. It may in fact have company.

I don't know if he will get out the drill and go for it today, or schedule me for a follow-up some time around Christmas. I also worry that I will not like this guy, because he came recommended by a friend and it will be awkward if I think he stinks. That's happened before. 

We now pause for a comical old piece of clip art, and I will report further beneath it. If I survive.

So here's the update:

My appointment actually was for tooth-hurty (2:30 har har har). My old dentist, whom I liked, was never safe to visit after lunch because he always had Chinese food and his own garlic breath could blunt the instruments. But no, this fellow was scentless and very good. Big-time COVID protocols, but I don't mind. As long as I didn't have to wear a mask during the exam (har har some more). 

I got off light. The cavity I worried about was not so bad. On the other hand, to fix it will probably require a crown. But we'll check again next year. Not needed now. Hooray! 

He did an old-fashioned cleaning all by himself -- that is, rather than blow the tartar off with a water jet, he used the little pick. My mouth was like that mine the Seven Dwarves worked in, without all the big pre-cut diamonds. Some people hate that kind of cleaning, but it makes me feel like the choppers are as immaculate as Queen Elizabeth's silverware. Of course, sometimes it makes me feel like I deserve an "I Gave Blood" sticker, but not so bad today. I did get the caution that more flossing will be appropriate to avoid gum disease, however. 

On the whole, for a dental appointment at tooth-hurty with an unknown dentist on a Monday near Halloween in 2020, I'm going to say it was as good as it could be. Drop that one in the gratitude box, and on to the next thing. 

P.S.: There was an incident this same afternoon regarding a fire alarm, a crazed dog, a business crisis, and a mad dash down a busy highway, but I may save that for another time. Right now I'm still enjoying my close escape from drilling. 

Tooth salon.

Had to find a new dentist, which is always scary. Just when you get used to the old one, something happens and you have to switch. And I'd only been going to the old one for twenty years. I was finally getting him broken in!

So I did what every idiot does; I went on social media to ask people in my geographic area for a recommendation. Then I took those names and checked them against rating sites. And all of this is stone-cold useless.

It's not that I got bad treatment. Actually, the hygienist was fine, and I think I got a good preliminary exam and a fine cleaning. And I didn't have to wait long for anything. But there were a couple of things I objected to:

1) The salon style. Seriously, this place had a row of stalls with dental chairs. It was like I had just popped in for a shave and a toothcut. Maybe this is the picture of modern dental care, but it was new to me.

2) Every booth had a TV, and they were all playing Wallykazam! Oh, sure, it was educational. I learned all about the letters S and Z, and why you shouldn't let a Borgelorp eat purple flowers. And the zombie zucchinis? Hilarious. But it was all a little wearing after a while.

The zombie zucchinis could have used a dentist, actually.

Funny, I'm old enough to remember when kids' advocates like the Comics Code Authority prohibited the use of the term zombie. But the times, they have a-changed, I guess. You have to teach the letter Z somehow.

3) The dentist spent about three minutes with me. He had examined the X-rays while I was getting my cleaning, yes. Still, I just didn't feel like he was giving me the quality of care due for a patient, the care that makes one feel like any problems have been detected. On the other hand, he also said I didn't need any work at the moment, which made me want to give him a hug. So there's that.

4) But I also never saw the dentist that had been recommended to me by name, the one I'd mentioned when I made my appointment, since you do not select your dentist at this place; you get whoever comes up in the queue.

I guess as time goes on we'll see more and more healthcare being provided this way, a factory-like atmosphere with loud cartoons. It speeds up service, lowers costs for equipment and malpractice insurance and the processing of the endless, endless paperwork ... but is it best for patients?

This setup is also a good way to hide poor doctors, slipping them onto the Wheel of Medicine. "Around and around she goes.... Oooh, you got Dr. Smerschnock! Well, maybe's he's sober today."

My current family doctor has his own practice and is an excellent physician, but he's also as old as Methuselah, and we expect him to pack it in any day now. Then what? Find a pill mill? Four booths, minimal waiting? The doctor will see you now... don't blink or you won't see him!

Toofie.

Not much to say today. Yesterday I had a very tough bout of dentistry. Even the dentist and his hygienist looked exhausted by the time I left. Here's a selfie of my tooth -- one of the teeth being treated -- with a temporary filling.

toofie

My gums are not naturally green. What you see around the tooth is a rubber dam. My dentist is a big believer in these. I mean for sanitary dentistry, not for the "sexual activities" use that Wikipedia describes. (Although I confess I don't know what he does in his spare time.) I hate hate hate hate the damn dam. It's like being half-suffocated, which is not half-okay. It doesn't stop the gums from hurting; in fact, to get the dam secure a metal ring has to go around the tooth, invariably hurting the gum. And my gums were already sore, as I also got a cleaning. By the time I left my gums felt like ground beef.

Then I got caught in horrible storms -- a severe thunderstorm alert was on for the tri-state area, and I live quite a ways from my dentist. I was tooling along with all the other crazy drivers and all was fine when bam! Ran right into the storm. The sky was blue one second, black the next, like we passed through a portal into another dimension. Huge flooding took out lanes in busy rush hour traffic. Most of the time we crawled along bumper-to-bumper. There were plenty of lightning strikes, but I did not see any of the downed power lines I'd heard about or the tornadoes that touched down here and there. My trash can had gone for a walk by the time I got home, though, and that sucker is heavy. 

So that's all I have at the moment. Brush and floss people, and use fluoride toothpaste. Yes, fluoride! I don't care what the modern-day Jack D. Rippers say; we need all the help we can get against tooth decay or we'll get stuck in thunderstorms with bleeding gums. Do you want that?

It pays to have the right equipment.

"Last night? We went to Peking Joe's All-U-Can-Eat
House of Garlic for dinner... Why?"

What shall we fight about in 2017?

The old battles of 2016 are now behind us. Trump/Clinton, Kanye/Taylor, the Rock/Diesel, Kelly/Michael, Putin/Entire World -- we need to let these things go. But what will be the big fights that threaten to tear us to pieces in 2017?

Here are my predictions.

1. Hazelnut vs. Real Coffee

Gonna be a rumble tonight

People like hazelnut coffee. Well, some people do. I mean, some people must. Someone's buying it, right? It wouldn't exist otherwise. And who else has money besides people? Leftover Neanderthals? Martians? Kardashians? Okay, Kardashians have money but they can't be drinking it all.

But the rest of us really dislike hazelnut coffee, even if we like actual hazelnuts, and recoil from it like a stressed vampire on Easter morning. Anyone who ever got a snootful of an old, burned Mr. Coffee pot with a hazelnut grease slick in the bottom of the decanter can remember that smell and recall it in horror.

I think this is the year it all goes violent.

The hazelnutters are far outnumbered on this one, but to keep sucking down the hazelnut coffee in the face of universal disappropriation they must be fanatical in their devotion and willing to put up a strong fight. Watch for this one to break out in March, after a winter of being stuck inside offices with the food and coffee choices of our coworkers reeking (har!) havoc.

2. Underwear vs. Commando 

The fatter and older we get as a nation, the more skin we seem to want to show. This may be considered an error as well as an attack on modesty, not to mention prudence. And this is the year that the commando look becomes a big deal.

What does it matter if others want to run around without underwear? For one thing, we know from the experience of nude beaches that the people who go nudist are almost always the people one would least want to ever, ever see nude. Same here. Those loudest about their lack of underwear will be those whom you would most want to put on extra clothes, just in case the clothing they have on rips. Then you realize you just shook hands with one of them.

Hygiene will be the proper and adequate club used to fight back against the scourge of underwearlessness, but in a world where drunk people make permanent ink-stained errors on their own flesh and pay real money for the privilege, it's still going to be hard sell.

This fight will begin in summer, when people start sweating in earnest.

3. Fluoride vs. No Fluoride

Those Truthers who blamed Bush and Cheney for the 9/11 attacks have gone rather quiet since the man they backed has failed to disclose evidence of such conspiracy after eight years in the White House. Others, who just assume Obama is now in on it, may be getting tired of the topic and want something new to write placards about.

Just gets to be the same ol' same ol' after a while

So what good conspiracy theory can get people brawling? Contrails vs. Chemtrails? Too complicated. Vaxx vs. Anti-Vaxx? Meh, measles is coming back. Fluoride vs. No Fluoride? Hey...

Sure, the American Dental Association claims fluoride in the water supply saves teeth, but they didn't even bother to prove that flossing is good for you. So what does fluoride really do? Makes you docile and easy to control. That's why revolutionary small companies like Tom's of Maine make a fluoride-free toothpaste -- they're helping us break free!

This should start a good screaming match later in the year, especially as reason and evidence only proves to guys like the man shown above that you're part of the conspiracy. (My check is late, by the way, Mr. Illuminati....)

4. Marvel vs. DC

The all-time classic nerd battle, spilling out into the streets this year. In the 1960s, Marvel stole a march on DC by writing comics for more mature kids; in the 1980s, DC struck back; now Marvel has the more successful movies, but DC has the more mature movies and more successful TV shows. With eight DC and Marvel movies coming out this year, expect the geek-out freakout to begin around the release of Justice League in November. Also enjoy the internecine side fights (TV Flash vs. movie Flash, Holland vs. Maguire vs. Garfield as the webhead, etc.).

Well, those are my predictions for this year's big throwdowns. I'm sure we'll find a lot more to argue about, since when you put any two of us in a room you can get a fight.

Dr. Ghoulsby's House of TERROR!

Halloween came early for me, children... I found myself trapped---TRAPPED! in the clutches of the fiendish Dr. Ghoulsby! 

I managed to escape by the skin of my teeth---which is quite fitting, actually.

I got this photo from my horrible imprisonment:

I don't think dentists wonder much about why people hate seeing them. Unless you're in dental agony, you're expecting your dentist to be a source of pain, not of relief. You don't think your sick teeth will kill you (WRONG!) and yet this guy hurts you more than your doctor, who treats you for things you know will kill you.

So much money goes into your dental health, too. Teeth make up such a small percentage of your body weight, and yet can easily swallow the majority of your healthcare spending, especially if you---like me!---have no dental insurance.

And that's where Dr. Ghoulsby's Office of Horrors comes in. When I went to see him I was anticipating a clean bill of health and a pat on the head and a "See you in six months!" Instead I got a "Gee, this tooth is a little soft by the filling" and a "We're just going to drill off that bit and patch it" and popping off the old filling and GOD WHAT IS THAT AAAAAAAH

What it was, was my rotten ol' tooth that had decayed under the filling, requiring a crown. Readers of this blog and its many Thing I Shouldn't Eat entries will have no trouble guessing how my enamel got to its low estate. My quick hi-how-are-ya bloody-gums cleaning turned---TERRIFYINGLY!---into thousands of dollars and two more visits. What the hell?!?

For the record, my dentist is an excellent dentist and an excellent human being. I couldn't praise him more if I were Donald Trump ("He's the BEST dentist in the world with a YUUUGE practice..."). And even he couldn't soften this blow.

I'm no fan of horror movies; my imagination is too horrible unaided. And I know there's more than enough real horror out there in the world. But for me, this was as bad a horror show as I want to endure this fall. I'd take twice the pain at half the price; I almost wish he'd pulled the damn thing.

Too late now.

MUCH TOO LATE!! MWAH AH AH!!!!!!

(I guess I'll have to say a novena that thousands of people buy my books so I can pay Dr. Ghoulsby to set me free. I think this may be karmic punishment for the character of Tilly McHeath, D.D.S., a.k.a. Matilda the Hun, Measleyville's craziest dentist, in MacFinster. Sorry!)