The Chair

The dreaded chair!

Had to sit on it for almost two hours last weekend.

It was not the chair or the usual nonsense associated with it that bothered me.

Have sat on it many times before.. Been there, done that!

We are talking about the Dentist visit here, in case you have not caught on..

This time, they forgot to turn on the water to the drill thingy. Poor me is getting this burning smell from the one nose that is still not numb from the injection (last time it was novocaine, this time the needle said "octocaine".. must be one number lower grade than novocaine!). In spite of the caine downgrade, the mouth did not feel the burn.. The doc figured it out pretty quickly.. called the assistant and said "I think something is wrong.. This thing got extremely hot.. is the water on?" This when the patients eyes are a few inches away from a smoking drill bit that has just burnt some flesh!

They found the water switch, turned it back on and proceeded as though nothing happened. My pain is still there though!

Never listen to a dentist when they say:

"Deep cleaning should be good!"

what they mean is that

"Deep cleaning (your wallet) should be good (for me)!"

Now that all the cleaning has been done, the verdict?

"your wisdom tooth is impacted. We have cleaned everything around it, filled cavities on nearby teeth (which did not hurt me in any way) but still the pain is not going away. So we are refering you to a specialist to get it extracted. It might be a surgery because most of the tooth is in the bone!"

This after the dentist goes "you know it is purely amazing that you have such a big cavity and no symptoms. The more decay I remove from this, the more I see.. this is like Pandora's box!".

I was thinking "Lady, If pandora had the X-ray machine that you used last week to capture my teeth in all its gory detail, she would have never opened the box!".. but because there were a few plastic and metal wedges between my teeth, and a drill a few centimeters above my face, I kept that thought to myself!

Thank you Dentrica!!!! (Dentist in America)

I am soooo looking forward to my next India trip to meet my good old dentist! My faith in the healthcare system has now been downgraded to "Orange". Oh wait, it has always been Orange, like the Security level in the San Jose Airport.. Let me downgrade it to "Red" for a change.

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Comments

[Gopinath Sundharam]

Nice post. I and my brother had a similar experience few years back. The doctor in US told my brother to actually go to India to do deep-cleaning as it costs more than the flight ticket -- my bro was schooling here then. My brother made the trip exclusively for his tooth problems. :)

Read this article and was laughing like crazy and am still laughing..

[Balaji S Rajan]

So after your returned your home did your wife say

"yar kittaiyum pallai kattatheengannu sona ketteengala... Ipadi pallai kaatitu vandhu irukeengaley.. Vetkama Illai"... - Just joking. I could imagine it. It is all the same everywhere.