Get your hands out of my mouth

I am not afraid of dentists, and in that fact I am thankful. I wouldn't even say I hate the dentist. I think my feelings for the dental profession would best be characterized as mild distaste.

I am not certain I have ever had a friend who was in the dental profession so my interactions with dentists have been confined to actual dental work. Considering dental work is rarely a pleasant experience it is unfair for me to really judge a dentist as a person on such experiences. I am certain dentists are lovely people.

That being said, I still do not enjoy them sticking their hands in my mouth. I had 9 years worth of orthodontics. 9 years of wearing braces and head gears and retainers. 9 years of monthly visits to have things twisted and tightened and adjusted. That is a lot of time to build up some animosity towards dentists.

For the most part though I escaped just disliking having my teeth worked on. I suppose it shows in the fact that I haven't seen a dentist really since I had my braces off when I was 17. I am 30 now. That might be a bit excessive an amount of time between checkups.

I have actually been a few times for wisdom teeth issues. Two of those annoying teeth have been removed, but the other two plague me to this day. Seriously they are problems. I will spare you the details, but you can rest assured that they have caused me a lot of pain and money already and still haven't been through the extraction process.

As I lay in the chair today staring up at the light, feeling the sharp jabs from the dentists tools, little puffs of air as she dried my teeth, my cheeks and lips being stretched unreasonably far by the little mirror, I was really reminded how much I disliked this process. One would think I would keep regular maintenance done so nothing catastrophic happened requiring more frequent and expensive procedures. Of course that goes into the realm of common sense, and we do not use that here.

In the end you will probably be hearing more dentistry woes from me. The list of things that need to be done is a little dizzying. Words like scaling, deep cleaning, root canals, extractions, crowns, fillings, and periodontal disease were thrown around today. Also words like financing and payment plans were circulating around.

Painful for my mouth, and painful for my pocket. Yup must be the dentist.