The history of dentistry is replete with horror stories.
Mark Twain tells of a dentist who extracted a patient’s entire skeleton along with a stubborn molar, sending the poor guy home in a pillowcase. And most of us are familiar with the dentist in “Little Shop of Horrors”. My stories do not rise, or sink, to that level, but are gripping. No pun intended.
As a child, I was given more than my share of candy by my grocer father. When he came home for lunch, I would run to him, begging for “NDY”. I paid for the treats not long after, with numerous toothaches and trips to our ancient family dentist, who just had to be ripe for retirement. Up six floors in the creaky old elevator to the top of the Herald Building, my panic rising as I passed each floor. My dentist had no patience whatsoever for a squirmy, terrified 8 year old. I sensed this keenly. Into the chair I went, the dentist pumping the chair endlessly to raise it to the proper height. I learned quickly that the shot of novacaine was more than a “pinch”. And that drill! Could have repaired a water main. On and on it droned, shirring off chalky dust into my poor little mouth. Everything hurt.
Fast forward through eleven years of reprieve from dentistry. I guess the aging doctor must have filled the vast majority of my teeth. But then came jaw deep agony from an infected molar, impossible to ignore or suppress. Off to another dentist. What a transformation! The space age had arrived in dentistry. The chair whooshed up with lightening speed. Pain meds shot in quickly and efficiently. Almost before I knew it, that high speed drill was in and out of my mouth. Minimal discomfort and thawing out time. Wow! Some things in our world have definitely improved.