Doctor Philip McCavity
Have you ever noticed there are, and have been many TV shows on medical doctors but never any TV shows on dental doctors? Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, St. Elsewhere, Chicago Hope, ER, Mash, Frasier, Nip/Tuck, General Hospital, the list goes on and on. In Canada and America (Wikipedia) there have been 96 TV medical shows and 0 shows showcasing dentistry. Jerry Robinson from one of the Bob Newhart Shows was about as close as dentistry got to headlining on TV.
What's wrong with showcasing a dentist as an interesting or complicated, funny, filthy rich, playboy, type character? Well nothing. It just that we don't like them!
And I'll tell you why. They don't put us to sleep when they hurt us. TV would be flooded with new medical shows all about the ins and outs of the sexy world of dentistry. Dentists would be household names like doctors Ben Casey and Marcus Welby were to old people. They'd have their own marketable action figures, lunch boxes and pajamas if they would just put us to sleep while they drill into our heads!
Both medical and dental experiences start out the same way. You sit in a waiting room reading old magazines or play on your phone for half an hour. It's then when you leave the waiting room that dentistry gets its bad rap. In medical office the doctor talks with you and listens to you. In dentistry a dentist talks with you while he distorts your answers with his fingers in your mouth.
"So had any problems since our last visit six months ago?" He asks.
"Whaa eye Kaaan bye hon maaa ref sye oh ma mow" I clearly enunciate.
"Well ya got a cracked tooth Hawaii and we should replace some old fillings and since you have insurance golf clubs we should do a bunch of bonding on your choppers."
"We we? Ef oooo sa show."
And then he starts drilling! He pinches and pulls on your lips, pokes your gums with a nail and then starts drilling. A doctor of medicine,...will asks questions, says uh huh, yes uh huh, then he sends you to a specialist. My dentist never sends me to another dentist! He just goes at it with drill and pick and when he makes a mistake he says rinse and spit. I have to help my dentist in his procedure of my operation. I never have to irrigate incisions for my doctor!
And it's not like you can spit like the professional you really are. I mean you've mastered the science of the spit in grade four with all your buddies. But this expulsion of oral phlegm is handled with the finesse of a three year old spitting corn syrup into a headwind. You're wearing it! The handle on the chair is wearing it! And is the side of the little whirlpool sink. All three points are connected with,....???? Some sort of shiny string. Then he tips you back in the chair till your heads almost touching the floor and the string follows!
He's talking to you but you can't hear over the high, vibrating, teeth shattering, (you can feel them smash against the inside of your cheeks) deafening scream of his favorite drill. It's the same one he had at his home before he got caught working from his basement.
I don't think my medical doctor talks to me while he's operating. He's concentrating! Concentrate will ya!? If nothing else concentrate on using that Dixie straw on the end of that pathetic suction hose before I drown! That suction straw is never where it's suppose to be. Most of its time it's hanging in your mouth away from where it needs to be giving your tongue a hickey
Why am I forced to be awake through this? Why am I not asleep? Is my being conscious all just to rinse and spit!?
And now he's literally taking every nickel I have by inverting me upside down in his dental throne of pain. All my change and car keys are bouncing and clanging on and across his floor as I watch them roll away in my inverted position.
My doctor of medicine gives me a cool nightie and puts me to sleep with a room full of his friends to watch over me. Nice guy eh?
I wish I had on a cool nightie now! I'm sweating so bad now, like my change I'm sliding out of my pants.
And it's just him and I in the room. He can do what he wants and it will be his word against mine. Him with the two diplomas on the wall (even if one is just from Magi-Cuts) and me upside down light headed with an airplane landing light shining in my face. "Well your honor I saw,....?? A bright light!"
And you don't know what the heck he's doing. Even he can't see what's happening! He's using little mirrors on the end of sticks stuffed in your mouth competing for space with a Dixie straw and ten fingers. Medical doctors have magnifying glasses and microscopes with HD cameras. Pencil thin snake like microscopic cameras that are expertly fed along internal natural pathways of the body while you dream the procedure away.
Meanwhile upside down sweating like Mike Duffy at trial your subjected to head rattling high pitched drills that are blasting away fillings and tooth enamel to create gaping chasms of dental wasteland. Down to bedrock and a firm foundation is what's needed to now build back which once was.
Will I look more handsome be able to talk quicker? No? Will I be able to climb stairs without pain or now play the piano like a doctor of medicine might achieve in an operation? No? To be fair I couldn't climb the stairs before.
Drilling now complete he starts rebuilding. No permits no inspections no one to say 'Yup that should do,' he is unto himself. He starts with some sort of roofing putty at the bottom of the pit he just drilled in your face. Using such physical force with his metal sticks and trowels that he's pushing you back in your pants. And with great pressure bit by bit and with magical lights he somehow sets the roof putty to tooth enamel hardness.
"Bite. Grind. Bite again." He requests. At which point you mumble that the only the side of your face he just worked on is biting. Which he understood as 'Can you use that big drill on my face again?'
What the hey! Why did you put too much roofing putty in my face?! And why didn't you drill it out before you made it hard?!
"Okay rinse." he says as he starts to right the throne of pain and I'm right side up for the first time in over an hour. Light headed I flash him a look that this ain't going to be pretty. But I rinse and spit like a three year old so that the pretty receptionist will find me repulsive. And by her judging that the oral phlegm design on my shirt and chin is repulsive she will have saved her and my marriage.
Then he says those five words. The five words that find you leaping to your feet like a darted and drugged yearling moose. Bumping, spinning and tripping into chairs and walls, knocking over instrument trays and lights. Because your dizzy! Dizzy and light headed from being upside down for so long. But your freedom is now assured, operation complete. 'SEE YOU IN SIX MONTHS' he says. Five beautiful words.
With your dentist there's no bed with a caring nurse to monitor your progress as you awake from your dream. No wheel chair to the front door and someone to drive you home. No, not with the dentist. Your running out of his office head spinning, bumping into things trying to hide your phlegm art as you spin past the receptionist. New tooth brush and Smurf sized tooth paste in hand you run out the door and almost get hit by a car. But you don't care! You just want the experience over. You want away! You want to go home and flick on the TV and relive it all again. NOT!
And that's why boys and girls you'll never have a dentist on your lunch box, jammy's or television. Besides they have no time to do a TV show, they're all in Hawaii on the golf course telling funny 'Rinse and Spit' stories.
Bob Niles
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