Modern dentistry

I had to get a wisdom tooth extracted over the weekend. You know one always feel so nervous while heading to the dentist. I keep telling myself that I can do this...I've experienced and survived intense labour pangs and managed quite well (bar the yelling, as S reminds me, but that's a story for another day!!). Ads had to have a dental checkup too so I took him along.

Now this is one of those nice swanky places which charge you an arm and a leg. The upside is, courteous staff, coffee and tea on call, current magazines, piped music and those funky colourful chairs and equipment specially for kids. Ads was asked to lie down, given a pair of headphones and asked which channel he would like to watch while he was being examined. The LCD screen was stuck to a false ceiling a few feet above his head! He asked for Nat Geo. The doc said "Oh don't you want to watch cartoons?" Ads promptly replied "Cartoons don't give you any knowledge." Yeah that's his thing now. Knowledge. The lovely fiction books that I bought for him lie untouched since they are clearly for knowledge-unseeking folks!

I was forced asked to watch TV too. Unwisely, I gave in and agreed. The thing is, it all seems a little callous to me. It looks as though I couldn't care less about the state of my teeth if I'm watching Seinfeld while the dentist is busy drilling away. I mean, it's not like I'm getting a pedicure done! Half the time you can't see the screen anyway because the doc is bending over your mouth. You can't very well tell her "Hey doc, do you mind moving your hand, I'm missing all the punch lines here?" And then I dropped the remote every single time I moved forward to rinse and the doc had to bend and pick it up.

They did have some very advanced stuff to inject the local anaesthesia. Or maybe it's not advanced at all - it's been more than 7 years since I've been to a dentist for anything other than a routine check. I thought the injection would hurt, instead she used a vibrator on the gums while she injected and I felt nothing more than a teensy-weensy prick. The senior doc then came along and very casually wrested the tooth out. I felt a small tug and that was it.

Hail modern medicine! A 100% painless tooth extraction in the time it gets to watch an episode of Modern Family :)