The pleasures of dentistry

23Sep08

You would have been as amused as I was yesterday to read the comment which I noticed in my dentist’s Visitors Book as I waited to make my next appointment at the desk. It might possibly be the only such comment of its kind – in the entire world. Next to her name and address, this very satisfied patient had written, “Always a pleasure”. No doubt she was smiling when she wrote it – with all of her canines, premolars, molars and incisors gleaming.

Now, unless I am much mistaken, the word “pleasure” is not something one would usually associate with a visit to the dentist.  Normally, one would conjure up such words as “dread”, “anguish” and “blood-curdling”.

But my dentist is different. For a start, his surgery is more akin to an up-market “boutique hotel” than a clinic. The décor is elegant with contemporary art, smart moleskin-covered chairs, and atmospheric lighting. The perfect selection of attractive coffee-table books on travel, rather than decades old Readers Digests, means I could happily sit in that waiting room for hours enjoying the ambience and reading about the crumbling ruins of ancient civilisations, that resemble how my teeth might look in a decade or two were I not here.

Then there is the minimalist shelving with a tasteful display of colourful designer toothbrushes and organic herbal toothpastes from Italy – mine has “8 erbe con protezione completa” so my smile is sweet – and natural too. This dentist’s methods are so heart-warmingly gentle that he never allows the word “pain” to pass his lips. He says quietly, “You may feel a little discomfort”.

Most thrilling though is that the treatments now on offer have arrived in the year 2008 from the realms of science-fiction. Appropriately enough, my dentist’s initials are SF.

On my visit last week, SF diagnosed that one of my teeth was showing the early signs of decay. He did not use the X-ray machine, oh no! He used the latest laser technology that can detect decay even before it is visible to an X-ray or the experienced dentist’s eye. Yesterday, to treat this decay, he offered me the traditional option of injection, drilling and filling – first pioneered in the school of dentistry of Tomás de Torquemada – or the latest, pain-free technology. This entails Ozone – yes, Ozone – being blasted onto the tooth, instantly destroying 99% of bacteria immediately, allowing the tooth to ‘remineralise” stronger than before and more resistant to the onset of decay than was my original tooth. Well there’s no choice is there?

The phrase, “It’s dentistry Jim but not as we know it” came to my head several times as the only “little discomfort” I experienced was the occasional electronic beep in my ear and SF making me laugh while his fingers were jammed in my mouth. At the use of such powerful, non-invasive healing methods, Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy would be spinning in his grave with joy (except he’s not going to be born until the year 2227, according to his biography on Wikipedia).

In 1936, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith predicted that, in the future, the “enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.”

I felt somehow yesterday, I got a glimpse of that future – at my dentist’s. And yes, I concur, it was actually a pleasure.

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Tags: Bahai, dentistry, Ozone