Dentist

I had one dentist from birth until the age of 16. She was alright. I never had any problems with her, though my parents thought her methods were kind of outdated. Maybe that was why when she moved her office, we suddenly stopped receiving the postcards telling us to all come for appointments. Either way, I suddenly had no dentist.

Through some trial and error I eventually ended up at a dentist that my dad seemed to like. He seemed nice enough, and compared to the other dentists I'd been to, his office was fancy, new and clean, with TVs in the ceiling and headphones to drown out the grinding. Sure, he had a habit of substituting expensive procedures that weren't covered by my dental plan without bothering to consult me and I had to tear up a couple of his bills in his face but otherwise we got along. Eventually my mom lost patience with his hygenists and forbade us all to ever go back.

Then after a string of different places, I ended up at another dentist, who seemed alright at first. Nice guy, nice staff, clean office... But to clean my teeth his staff liked to use the grindy drill thing rather than just the polish thing, and that thing makes me kind of nervous. The grindy drill thing is also really hard on your gums, and there wasn't a single appointment where I didn't come home with swollen, bleeding gums. I had never had cleaning hurt that much before.

For whatever reason I kept going back to this same dentist, even though he drilled into a tooth without anasthetic and hit a nerve. I guess it's understandable that I became increasingly more reluctant to visit the dentist. We had an argument about my wisdom teeth and I stopped going.

So, since I seem to blog so much about dentists, it may come as a surprise that I've been to three dental appointments within the past week and there has been nary a whisper of it on my blog.

I haven't written anything because there's nothing to complain about. My mom tried out a new dentist and liked her, and started bugging me about making an appointment about a year ago. I was skeptical and put it off but I got tired of popping pills and called the office. The receptionist asked me if I wanted to see the other dentist instead and I said "um... okay?"

But I was pleasantly surprised. She's young and pleasant, and seems to be fairly capable and thorough. Best of all, she agrees with me, or at least she recommends stuff that I've been thinking of doing, or have wanted done for some time.

So yeah, my mouth is frozen. Yay.