Dentista!

There are certain things which America does very well – they do, for example, do a fine line in oppressing indigenous people, protective trade practices and thinking that Scotland is the capital of France (hint, for all the Americans out there who are scoffing and saying “I know what the capital of France is!” it's not “F”.)

There are things which the UK does well – such a civilization – which America does less than perfectly. Other examples would be the afore-mentioned geography and politics which is slightly more complex that “I have a truly enormous stick and the will to use it”. Gunboat diplomacy aside, the concepts of the Yankies rolling out a red carpet is a wholly different prospect to the Limeys doing it.

In our case, starlets stand half-naked on it and smile vacuously at cameras – in theirs, starlets do exactly that while entertaining the troops. “Sexbomb” is not a noun here – it is an either / or proposition.

But one thing which the USA does much better than the UK is dentisty.

And when I say “does much better” I do not intend to suggest that there is any really sense of comparison which can be made here – except in the idea that one could compare Genghis Khan with the fellow who steals your lunch money. Or perhaps comparing Stalin with the office manager. Or perhaps anyone you see in the wash-out rounds of Pop Idol and Sarah Brightman. There is a vague sense of comparison possible in that one wishes to be in the same league as the other, but the final analysis is that there is such a gulf to be crossed before the actual mountain can be climbed it becomes impassable. This gulf is the metaphorical equivalent of Devilmaw Gorge, the gap that slew Avariel, God's messenger. That is a gulf separated by two ranks of metaphors from the real – a gap which is, itself, impassible to the vast majority of human intellects. And it is twice.

So, UK dentistry is bad.

This is the ultimate point of this post, and all the Americans are saying, “Yup – knew that all along!” but the Brits perhaps are thinking, “Oh, all that means is that we don't spend thousands on vanity treatments which give us teeth as artificial as half of Hollywood's breasts!” And while it is certainly true that veneers and bleach feature more heavily in American dental practices than they do in a Debbie Harry-lookalike carpentry seminar, that is not the key point I wish to make here.

UK dentistry hurts.

The Britons are saying, “And so does US dentistry! You can't extract a tooth or drill a whole or grind a molar without a degree of pain! You can numb it, but not eliminate it.” The Americans tend to numb themselves, and eliminate others, but that is by-the-by. I stand by my countrymen's comment – pain is essential and inevitable for certain types of dental work.

But in England having your teeth cleaned properly and professionally hurts. I mean no disrespect to the fine people in the white coats with the degrees and the Coke-bottle goggle-glasses, and their heaving-bossomed set of nurses packed into starched-erotica like ice-cream into under-sized sundae glasses – I am certain they are doing what they are told. But it bloody hurts.

Last time I had my teeth cleaned at a UK dentist, said sawbones merchant came along and pretty much wrenched by my jaw with a long probe-like thing with a pointed spike on the end. Scrape, wrench, dig in, extract. Pretty much like someone digging a trench for a new fiber-optic line. Then, said doctor grabbed a hand-held pneumatic drill and ran it around my gum line in thirty seconds flat, jarring my teeth loose. I rinsed and spat – the water was tinged with red.

Red. My precious lifeblood, corpuscles I can never get back. Those are mine, damnit. I made those. From iron and stuff. They carry oxygen, you bastard. You want me to suffocate?

His response? “A little bit of bleeding is normal at this stage.” Because I am naïve and tend to trust those who can inject me with lethal doses of barbiturates if they have a mind to do so, I felt this was perhaps normal. You are, after all, removing stuff which is encrusted on your teeth – plaque and whatnot. It is hard and does not dislodge easily. The polishing itself was done with some sort of Borrowers' floor-buffer, and made my teeth buzz with a strange aching sensation for minutes afterwards.

But the USA – oh, that is a delight. The nurse bends over you with a similar tool – which she proceeds to scrape gently and repeatedly and carefully over the lines of tartar and so forth as if she were extracting the bones of some particularly fragile lizard or frog or even osteoporosis-suffering bird from granite. When my teeth are treated with the same degree of respect as a Paleolithic avian, I begin to sit up and take notice.

She then brings forth a buzzing tool – for those of you whose knowledge of nurses stretches to ones who wear vinyl which hangs down not quite as far as the men's tongues, this is not what you think it is. This is a real device used by real nurses – and it is something which is designed to remove hard encrusted tartar etc. It is, I feared, the same pneumatic drill that as nurse used on me before.

Good God, did I just type the words “pneumatic”, “drill”, “vinyl” and “nurse” in the same paragraph? My Google refer logs are scary enough as it is.

This tool is – however – not the hand-held jack-hammer that I have been subjected too before. It is a “sonicator” or something of the sort. Despite the American predilection for making up new nouns by adding the suffix “-ator” to the end of the nearest word that didn't manage to get off the page Webster's fell open on, this describes what it does very well. It sonicates.

I sonicate. You sonicate. He / she / it sonicates. We all sonicate together.

What it does is spray water in a small stream with a sonic pulse in it. It dislodges stuff, I guess. I dunno – maybe you could get the same effect by gargling with your iPod headphones in your mouth and playing Back In Black really loud? Do I look like a sonicatician?

(Kid Dentist and the Sonicaticians would be the best name for a band ever.)

This thing does not hurt. It does not rend my gums to shreds. It does not cause me to grip the arms of the chair and wish death upon the dentist and his humming cohorts. It simply cleans my teeth. A radical concept.

And then she gets this little brush thing and asks, “Is mint flavored toothpaste okay?”

I look at her as if she has just landed from Mars. I expect some sort of trick – if I say “No, I detest and despise mint in all it's forms” is she going to say, “Well, sucks to be you – the only thing anyone sells is mint toothpaste. What do you think this is, Wallgreens' stock on Friday afternoons?”

She continues. “I have cherry, apple, and cinnamon.” Cinnamon? Had she said “and mixed with the blood of unbaptized babies” I would not have been more surprised. Cinnamon?

(Actually, that is another rant entirely – The Cincinnati Chew-Chew – on the prevalence of cinnamon in American cuisine. But I digress. This is me digressing.)

I look at her with a careful look of pity. “I don't spend that much attention on choosing my entrees – I'll take mint.”

She tells me that she has heard that they have made cookie dough flavored toothpaste. I am at a loss for words – what does it taste like, other than raw? Who – who is over five – wishes to eat lots of something that tastes of raw flour and egg? Is this some sort of penance for using the “unbaptized blood” paste?

She then proceeds to carefully clean my teeth, taking time and care, and ensuring that she does not rattle the wildly spinning buffer over my tender gums. She brushes my teeth rather than my mouth.

And finally, she flossed each tooth carefully and elegantly. Rather than simply tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to spit out the only thing that keeps my heart beating.

The whole procedure took about three times longer than it does in the UK – and even without insurance probably cost about the same. It did not cause my any pain or discomfort.

Don't even get me started on the fact I need to have a core and crown due to sawbones dentistry enacted by British dentists who have no idea that you cannot simply drill a random hole in a person's face and fill it with amalgam. That does not work. Even I know that, and I am not a dentist.

The crown and core issue will be the subject of a further rant. But, for now, know this;

People in the USA have good teeth. This is not due to diet, this is due to the fact they go to their dentists because they are not afraid of them.

Pain, ladies and gentlemen, is a state of mind. It is not a way of life.