Dental Diversity

San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city full of diversity of all kinds... religious, ethnic, cultural, sexual preference, dentistry.

Yesterday, I experienced some of its cultural dental diversity, first hand. Recently, I changed my dental insurance, so I had to pick a new dentist. It was a tough choice because I really liked my old dentist, and it was hard for me to part with him. He was from the midwest and had a daughter in school at my alma mater. We had so much in common. So much to say as he tinkered away, scraping plaque and counting my teeth. Genial, comfortable, familiar.

My new dentist is... well, different. Not knowing much about the people listed on my insurance's website, I had trouble deciding, so I just chose someone near my house. My new dentist doesn't speak much English. Between me trying to talk with shiny objects jammed in my mouth and her speaking what she knows of English in her heavily accented speech, our conversation goes a little bit like this:

Dentist: So ha fill an hur much. Dis hur hee?
Me (with pointy metal tool stuck in my tooth): Ya. Eels ery ainful hwen you do at.
Dentist: Ah. Cuz it loo. We take ee ow an poo new.
Me: Oh. Sank you vewy uch.

I had just gone in for a cleaning, but my filling was cracked. The tooth was sensitive and, although I truly loath having dental work done, I conceded that she should fix it that day. She immediately got the dreaded Q-tip with that bad tasting numbing jelly on it and shoved it between my cheek and gums, and walked away without exchanging any words with me.

There I sat, giant Q-tip protruding from my face, inspecting the faded outdoor-tree-scene wallpaper. After about five minutes of that, I was understandably bored. I sat up in my chair and looked around at the somewhat ancient-looking dental tools on the tray beside my head. Hmm. Pointy.

Finally, she was back. I resumed my Good Dental Patient position in the chair, as she removed the Q-tip. She grabbed a syringe with such an impossibly long needle that it looked like a cartoon, and wrenched my head in her direction, using my cheek as a handle. Um. Ouch. Then, without so much as a calming word, she squirted some of the numbing liquid into my lap to check the syringe. Ew. A split second later, she stabbed the needle into my gums practically poking through my cheek into my eyeball. At that painful moment, I couldn't help comparing her to my old dentist. Sweet. Gentle. Midwestern. And now this. She rarely spoke, and when she did, I rarely understood. I came to the conclusion that I am a Dental Racist.

I had been to a dentist in the Dominican Republic and had a similar experience with cultural differences making me uncomfortable. It is very interesting to me. In other situations, I enjoy cultural diversity. I want to be in line at the grocery store with the League of Nations, but I want Garrison Keillor as my dentist.

Having made that realization, I began noticing other things that must be acceptable to patients in her country, but were however, rather upseting to a pampered, American dental patron such as myself. First, there was her lack of general communication. Aside from the language issue, she almost never spoke and rarely looked me in the eye. Second, when she was reaching for a dental instrument, she would reach over my face to the tray on the other side of my head, dragging her entire sleeve across my nose roughly, and one time, even resting her elbow on my forehead for an extended period of time as she spoke with the dental assistant in their native tongue.

But the thing that most made me want to hop on a plane and travel back to my midwestern homeland to seek a dentist who shares my background, was when she was drilling. The dental assistant had my head in a vice grip and had managed to fit no less than three dental sucking tubes in my mouth. The dentist bent way over me, wrestling my mouth to a much wider position than it has in nature, drilled happily away until I jerked in pain. They both stopped, looming over me like a scary scene from an old Twilight Zone episode... masked, goggled, gloved, with hands full of pointy metal tools covered in my blood.

Dentist: You fee sum fing?
Me: Ya. Ik urts.
Dentist: Okay. Ah most done hee.

And she went right back to drilling. Apparently, in her culture "Ik urts" means "Oh, not at all. Please keep opening a tunnel from my tooth straight into every nerve in my face and squirting cold water into it. I'm just fine here." What I had meant to say, and perhaps I should have phrased it differently, was, "For the love of Christ, please stop before I lose consciousness!"

Five minutes later, I was still wringing my slippery, sweaty hands in my lap as she finished up. Oh, the pain. I tried imagining myself on a beach in the sun. I tried taking deep breaths. I tried imagining that I was a patient on an alien ship and that my memory would be erased when I was returned to earth.

Then finally, blessedly, she was done. She stood up abruptly and left the room without so much as a "Goodbye, and thank you for sitting still while I drilled a hole into your skull." While I was still lying down on the chair, recovering from my shock, the dental assistant handed me a plastic bag with a toothbrush and some floss enclosed. Printed on it were happy, cartoon teeth dancing around, enjoying their little, toothy lives.

I stumbled home in a stupor. I meant to write this then, but I was too close to the trauma.

Today, I'm well enough to see if I can hunt down Garrison's phone number. I wonder if he does fillings.