I hate dentists... or rather... I hate GOING to the dentist. There's never any good news and always a large amount of pain. There was this one delusional moment when I went to a dentist for a check up - when there was nothing wrong. Nothing hurt, nothing cracked, I just went. I plead temporary insanity for that moment of masochism. Although my teeth were fine he decided i needed a cleaning. The guy knocked off so much that my teeth (which were at that point of time giving me no trouble at all) became so sensitive that i couldn't even drink water let alone allow toothpaste to touch my teeth without suffering excrutiating agony. During the cleaning I kept telling him there was a problem but he insisted i was being over dramatic. After it was done and I told him my teeth were sensitive, he rubbished it and said it was just "Scaling" and was perfectly normal and would go away on its own. Two days later i was back and this time he had the temerity to say "Your enamel has worn out and the dentine is exposed. I wonder how I missed that." I sat there in shocked silence. I had to have three additional (extremely painfull) fillings that involved him pulling the gum away and filling in the surface of the tooth covering the dentine... so now even more pain and I had to pay for it.
Finally one fine day another tooth that had been filled in earlier cracked. Surprise, surprise my dentist was away and could not give me an appointment.... Tooth with a crack right down it. So i had to run around hunting for a new dentist. Found another one. He's great, a lot less painfull and really good at what he does. The latest encounter though has resulted in a large amount of pain. The throbbing, brain numbing type of pain. Well it involved extracting a wisdom tooth that was growing out of my jaw bone and whose roots were curved. He managed to remove it but the tooth crushed while it was being yanked out and so had to be levered out resulting in some damage to my cheek and lip. Pain, pain, pain. Why the heck are things so difficult. Why do encounters with dentists (who in real life might be rather nice folks) always have to be so painfull. The sound of the drill itself is enough to make my teeth hurt, even when its being used on someone else. So what's the solution, do i yank out all my teeth and replace them with dentures or do i just get used to pain and then maybe i wouldn't hate it so much....