Can I say I dread dental treatments. I had an appointment with a dentist yesterday at 10 O'clock in the morning for a routine biannual dental cleaning - rather I thought of it as just the dental cleaning - a good oral hygiene where they scrape the tartar off your teeth, polish them and once you are out with it, your teeth look shinier, whiter, feel cleaner than ever before and you have this new found gaps in between your teeth as they would have scraped every bit of the built up which formed in between your teeth over a period of time from your last dental care appointment and mine I remember was to be two years ago.
It was a very posh dental office for family and cosmetic dentistry to provide people with quality and comprehensive dental care.They claimed that they were concerned not only with my current dental problems but also with my long term dental health. Together, they say, we will work to ensure that I not only maintain dental health, but also have the opportunity to have a smile I will be proud of. That was a real good kick start for me...
I was asked to provide my dental health history in a form in which they were a series of never ending queries to be duly filled by me and after that if I had any questions, I shouldn't hesitate to ask!
Dental Health History as I recall -
The first question was - Are you apprehensive about dental treatment ? What am I supposed to answer... :)
Have you had problems with previous dental treatment?
Do you gag easily?
Do you wear dentures?
Does food catch between your teeth?
Do you chew on only one side of your mouth?
Do you avoid brushing any part of your mouth because of pain?
Do your gums bleed easily?
Do your gums bleed when you floss?
Do your gums feel swollen or tender?
Are your teeth sensitive?
Do you feel twinges of pain when your teeth come in contact with Hot foods or liquids - Cold food or liquids - Sours - Sweets?
Do you take fluoride supplements?
Are you dissatisfied with the appearance of your teeth?
Do you prefer to save your teeth?
Do your jaws ever feel tired?
Does your jaw get stuck so that you can't open freely?
Does it hurt when you chew or open wide to take a bite?
Do you find jaw pain or discomfort extremely frustrating or depressing?
Are you unable to open your mouth as far as you want?
Does your jaw pain or discomfort affect your appetite, sleep, daily routine, or other activities?
Do you have pain in the face, cheeks, jaws, joints, throat or temples?
Are you aware of an uncomfortable bite?
Are you a habitual gum chewer or pipe smoker?
Have you had a blow to the jaw?
To all of these and many more questions that I can't recall now, my answer was "NO".
and then there came a set of two more queries -
How often do you brush? and How often do you floss? - Brushing once a day for a little less than a minute is what I have been doing since years now and to their dismay I never knew how to floss.
Having completed the form here I rushed to the receptionist and handed over the forms to her. She flipped the pages back and forth and showed me many more forms to be filled. I gave a sigh, went back to where I was seated and went over those unfilled ones.
There was a long list of Medical Health History questionnaire to be answered in each category related to heart problems, blood problems, allergy problems, intestinal problems, bone or joint problems, stroke, thyroid problems, severe headaches, fainting spells or epilepsy, diabetes, tuberculosis, smoking, hepatitis, neurological disease, , history of alcohol or drug abuse, routine questions for the female gender... to all my answers were a humble "NO".
And there was a smile evaluation sheet which had to be filled too and explanations needed for every single query -
Do you like the way your teeth look?
Are you happy with the color of your teeth?
Would you like your teeth to be whiter?
Would you like your teeth to be straighter?
Do you have spaces between your teeth that you would like closed?
Would you like your teeth to be longer? If so Upper or Lower or Both?
Do you like the shape of your teeth?
Do you have missing teeth that you would like to replace?
Do you have old silver fillings that you would like to replace with tooth-colored fillings?
If you could change anything about your smile, what would you change?
To all of these questions it was again a "NO" with no explanations given! I would not change my smile and got it over with.
I was a little tired and the whole process also left me with some exasperation at the end of it all to have answered this personal questionnaire as I personally haven't thought of myself as much as it had provoked me to. Drained out of my patience, I found myself in an unexpected territory of some weird intrusion of a rare kind by some stranger as I had to ponder upon each and every aspect of my general routine ... It took me a good amount of forty five minutes from start to finish. This was just the preliminary to what was about to come in a while! Stay tuned!
More about it in the later post!
-Manasi
Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both Is dental.~Ogden Nash
2 comments:
That was a good one. I think you did justice for the experience you had. It was not overblown what so ever. And let me tell you that i had to fill the forms out twice , once for me and once for my daughter. We both took an appointment at the same time. And in addition to that they were astonished that i had no dental history....:). Heck i would not have a dental history because my dentist was in another country....:)
The final lesson.. brush well.. brush clean... brush twice a day and keep the dentist away....
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