As I mentioned the other day, I decided to visit my dentist after losing yet another filling (along with large chunk of tooth). I was sure I’d lost five fillings, but it turned out there were only four missing (it’s possible I lost bits of filling from the same tooth twice) and my dentist wasted no time in getting down to work. I have to first explain that I think I have the BEST dentist in Sevilla. He is always about saving teeth, and will fill and re-fill teeth rather than opt for more expensive options like crowns. He has repaired my old fillings many times now, even replacing them for free if they fall out again within a year or so. But the truth is that some of my molars don’t have much tooth left to work with after old crappy fillings fall out.
This morning I got to the office and told the assistent why I haven’t been there for over two years. She remembered the cancer and so I explained my reasoning about not wanting to spend whacks of money on dental work until I (hopefully!) get the five-year all clear after the next PET scan. But my dentist had other ideas. He was going to fill one lower molar and said the other lower one (the one I lost last week) needed a crown. I asked if I could wait until October and he said better not to considering how damaged it is. Apparently the top two teeth can wait but not this one. What can I say? I trust this guy.
So he got work, giving me lots of extra freezing because he remembered that I have very sensitive teeth and tend to get nervous (who me?) in the chair. At one point the assistent commented on the lovely gentle music playing and he said “Yeah, I put it on for her to help her relax”. To me “Is it working? Are you relaxed?” Cracked me up. And so I now have a new filling, actually a semi-reconstructed tooth with two pins to hold the filling. And next week I go for the first step for getting my crown. I was almost too scared to ask the price but it ended up more reasonable than expected, and they even said I can pay it in two instalments. On the way out I was given a few tubes of special toothpaste for extra-sensitive teeth… really glad now that I didn’t put this off.
How’s your dentist? I’ve never had one like this guy.
casa azahar 
Belatedly, I leave remarks.
See, I had crap luck with dentists from day one: in the dark backward and abysm of time, there was this hairy-forearmed mook who didn’t know that I had a recurrent lingual nerve, a variation spotted a few years ago by a client of mine who had already retired from dentistry. VIVID memories of drilling with no analgesia, when I was still too young to remember what year it was. After that there was this horrid husband and wife team who patronised me into my adult years (“Don’t you have a mommie and a daddie who could help with orthodonture?” — answer — ahem, NO.) And a cockamamie Vietnamese guy who numbed my face and then trapped my lip in some sort of dental wrench. And finally another client gave me the phone number of a fecking hero. Who then sold his practice but it was OK because the hygienist stayed, and she was the one whose opinion obviously counted — she was smarter about dental health than any dentist I’d had up to that point. Still going there ten years later.
Moral of the story, ask about the hygienist.
LikeLike
Pingback: el dentista | casa az