![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quislibetSo yesterday I went to the BU dental school for a checkup; it has been a couple of years. There were two or three years where I was practically going monthly to have something expensive done; one would think this might have taught me to have regular checkups, but instead I seem to have operated under the assumption that it was all over for a while.
Anyway, what with a year abroad coming up, I thought I should make sure my teeth weren't in danger of crumbling to dust upon encountering a particularly crunchy baguette or something.
One of my last dental experiences before yesterday was a few years ago, when the attractive Asian dental student then assigned to my case, assisted by her twin sister, had me immobilized in a chair and stuck sharp metal objects and power tools in my mouth with their delicate, latex-clad hands. In a certain sense I feel this was wasted on me, as even this impressive array of potentially kinky detail somehow managed not to push any of my personal buttons. But from another perspective it gives me something vaguely interesting to say whenever people are talking about dentistry (besides the war stories of root canals and wisdom-tooth removal), and I'm sure many of you have heard it before.
I dreaded the trip from BU to the BU Dental School, as they are conveniently connected by a straight shot on the 47 bus. I chose the more reliable route of trolley to Mass. Ave. and then the #1 bus to the Medical Center. To my surprise, it actually worked out that I got there in a timely fashion. When I arrived, an enormous number of people were exiting the building, and I realized there was a fire alarm going off. So I sat down to read The Confusion for a while, following the adventures of Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe in Hindoostan.
Eventually, the drill (for so it was; but what else do you expect from dentists?) was over and I still was on time. They had me fill out lots of paperwork and so forth, my old files being in a "warehouse." I had my checkup, which was not in itself noteworthy, but from nearby cubicles I overheard alarming things.
"I've been taking [leftover prescription] for the pain."
"You know, you shouldn't self-medicate."
"I know! But it was only for 10 days, because I couldn't get an appointment."
or, from further away:
"It's not that we don't want to treat you, but ... serious problem ... and we wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding ... you'd have to be rushed to the hospital ..."
After an instructor came by and more or less repeated more quickly the same checkup that the student had done, it was Full Mouth X-Ray time; some 27 slides were jabbed into my mouth and radiation shot through my skull over a period of roughly 20 minutes. This was not so enjoyable. Apparently, I have a small mouth (the subject has come up before -- in dentistrial situations, I hasten to add), and in certain angles the slides and their holder just plain won't fit. So a few of the set of 22 had to be repeated from slightly different angles, in hopes of full coverage.
At last, it was all over -- except that I will still have to go back for an actual cleaning and so forth when a student (not the same one I saw yesterday) is assigned to me and remembers to call and set something up. Ideally this will take place before the end of the first week in October.
I won't go into how long it took for me to get a sandwich after all this was over, except to say that there was a bus schedule (figuratively) looming over my head, the woman in front of me got the last of their falafel, and somehow the construction of a ham-and-cheese-on-a-sub-roll I ordered as a distant second choice took about as much time as if the man had been carefully composing each individual piece of lettuce from its very consituent atoms.
Anyway, what with a year abroad coming up, I thought I should make sure my teeth weren't in danger of crumbling to dust upon encountering a particularly crunchy baguette or something.
One of my last dental experiences before yesterday was a few years ago, when the attractive Asian dental student then assigned to my case, assisted by her twin sister, had me immobilized in a chair and stuck sharp metal objects and power tools in my mouth with their delicate, latex-clad hands. In a certain sense I feel this was wasted on me, as even this impressive array of potentially kinky detail somehow managed not to push any of my personal buttons. But from another perspective it gives me something vaguely interesting to say whenever people are talking about dentistry (besides the war stories of root canals and wisdom-tooth removal), and I'm sure many of you have heard it before.
I dreaded the trip from BU to the BU Dental School, as they are conveniently connected by a straight shot on the 47 bus. I chose the more reliable route of trolley to Mass. Ave. and then the #1 bus to the Medical Center. To my surprise, it actually worked out that I got there in a timely fashion. When I arrived, an enormous number of people were exiting the building, and I realized there was a fire alarm going off. So I sat down to read The Confusion for a while, following the adventures of Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe in Hindoostan.
Eventually, the drill (for so it was; but what else do you expect from dentists?) was over and I still was on time. They had me fill out lots of paperwork and so forth, my old files being in a "warehouse." I had my checkup, which was not in itself noteworthy, but from nearby cubicles I overheard alarming things.
"I've been taking [leftover prescription] for the pain."
"You know, you shouldn't self-medicate."
"I know! But it was only for 10 days, because I couldn't get an appointment."
or, from further away:
"It's not that we don't want to treat you, but ... serious problem ... and we wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding ... you'd have to be rushed to the hospital ..."
After an instructor came by and more or less repeated more quickly the same checkup that the student had done, it was Full Mouth X-Ray time; some 27 slides were jabbed into my mouth and radiation shot through my skull over a period of roughly 20 minutes. This was not so enjoyable. Apparently, I have a small mouth (the subject has come up before -- in dentistrial situations, I hasten to add), and in certain angles the slides and their holder just plain won't fit. So a few of the set of 22 had to be repeated from slightly different angles, in hopes of full coverage.
At last, it was all over -- except that I will still have to go back for an actual cleaning and so forth when a student (not the same one I saw yesterday) is assigned to me and remembers to call and set something up. Ideally this will take place before the end of the first week in October.
I won't go into how long it took for me to get a sandwich after all this was over, except to say that there was a bus schedule (figuratively) looming over my head, the woman in front of me got the last of their falafel, and somehow the construction of a ham-and-cheese-on-a-sub-roll I ordered as a distant second choice took about as much time as if the man had been carefully composing each individual piece of lettuce from its very consituent atoms.
