Dentistry is gross

I have no idea why someone would choose to be a dentist. Spend your day digging through people’s gross, festering mouths seems like an appalling way to spend your time to me. Okay, I know why they do it – the money. But the are a metric shitload of ways to earn far more money that are far less gross.

Whenever someone wants to make fun about someone’s choice of specialisation they always pick on proctologists. What sort of freak would choose to be an arse doctor? Well at least a proctologist expects an arse to be stinky. How many aspiring podiatrists really know how disgusting, fungus-y and diseased a foot can get? And how many student dentists are truly prepared for the vile and corpse-like stench that a human mouth can emit?

I state all this as a kind of apology to my dentist. I have a bit of an issue with gum disease which results in a fair bit of grossness mouth-wise. So when I go in for a serious cleaning (like this morning) it’s a fairly arduous process that involves much scraping, gouging, anaesthetic and blood. The hygeinist’s own words as she wiped my mouth at the end was I looked like something out of a horror movie.

An yes, I said I get anaesthetic when I’m having tartar scraped out of my gums. For anyone who thinks that makes me a wuss – you’re absolutely right. I think there’s a note on my file there that says “This bloke is a total nancy-boy, dose him up with massive amounts drugs to shut him up.” I think that note is there because I asked them to do it.

I don’t like pain.

And I have a major aversion to going to the dentist. This is the product of the childhood dentist I was subjected to. The guy was a fucking sadist. Or maybe just some random madman who claimed to be a dentist. I grew up in a small town where there people were easily fooled. When I needed filling this fucking bastard would drill without using any anaesthetic. No matter how much I screamed.

He would even do this shitty thing where he’d pretend the drill wasn’t going to hurt. Like saying it was going to make the agonising pain not happen. When this cunning plain completely failed to work the fault was all placed on me. His evidence was that it wouldn’t hurt was that he’d show how it shot a jet of water and say that was all it did. A jet of water! How could that hurt?

To which I desperately wanted to reply: “What about the sharp metal spinny bit that will soon be gouging holes in my non-numbed tooth? Why the fuck isn’t your finger touching that? Let me hold the fucking drill for a while and go to work on you, motherfucker! Let’s see if you still claim ‘it’s only water’ after I’ve had my turn!”

But I was a kid and he was an authority figure. So the bastard put me through excruciating pain and scarred me mentally because there was nobody to stop him. Motherfucker. Once I was an adult I probably didn’t go to the dentist for ten years. Which is not a good idea. When I finally went (triggered by a tooth essentially disintegrating) the dentist said the technical term for the condition of my teeth was “seriously fucked”.

So after some root canal and extraction of the worst teeth things were a bit better. Incidentally, although everyone talks about root canal like it’s the worst thing you can go through, it was a walk in the park compared to the shit I was put through as a kid. BECAUSE THEY GAVE ME DRUGS! The worst part was having to have my mouth open for so long.

Every dentist I’ve been to as an adult actually agrees that my childhood dentist was a bastard. And probably a sadist. And he clearly hated children. So I have discovered I wasn’t insane. I have also discovered I much prefer female dentists. Because when they really get to work they usually have to push their boobies against you. Which is a great distraction from the horror of having your mouth ripped apart.

I like boobies.

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