The Dentalist

Welcome, immaculately dentured reader, as I take you on a journey through the experience of going to the dentist here in the US.

There are a number of things we've been putting off due to the COVID pandemic; visiting the dentist and the optician are notably things we've not done since we left the UK. That's now coming up for 2 years ago, so we really could do to get these things done. So, verily, with the parting words of my UK dentist ringing in my ears ("Be careful of those American dentists; they'll try to get you to sign up for all sorts of treatments that you don't actually need"), we signed up with a dentist and went for checkups this week.

The first thing you'll notice as a difference is the appointment timing: a checkup in the UK takes all of 15 minutes, whereas here we appeared to each be booked in for a whopping hour and a quarter. Once at the surgery, it all seemed pretty standard, if slightly jollier than your average dentist's waiting room here in the UK.

Having got myself nice and comfortable in the dentists chair, I was invited to get some X-rays done - all pretty standard stuff. Imagine my surprise when the dental nurse beckoned me to don a lead apron! My insistence that this wasn't necessary in the UK fell on deaf ears, but pretty soon I found out why I needed that protective equipment: whilst back in the UK, a couple of X-rays suffices, here in the US I was told I was going to have a grand total of 18 X-rays taken.

Yup, you heard it right. In the UK it's 2 X-rays. Here's it's 18. I mean, obviously we're both past child-bearing age at this point, but I'm pretty sure as I walked home in the gloaming I felt myself glowing in the dark a bit like the Ready-Brek kids.

Then the dentist took a look at my mouth, and, well, you can guess what happened there. My dentist in the UK is a cheerful chap, able to smile happily through delivering relatively grim news, but here in the US I felt my standard of oral hygiene was somehow a disappointment. There proceeded a process of assessing my gums, which involved calling out a set of bingo-like scores, and I have a feeling this is the kind of full house I don't really want to be getting. Eventually the dentist gave up telling me everything that was wrong, like a reception-class teacher correcting spellings, and said "let's just fix those couple of things and then we can reassess from there". Also apparently our insurance gives us the option of having cleanings by the dentist 3 times a year, so we're booked in for that in a few months as well.

Anyway, dear reader, it could have been a lot worse. It's pretty expensive too, but fortunately the insurance covers most of it. Just to give you some idea of the going-over we had, even Helen needs some remedial work, which is pretty tremendous given her exemplary toothbrush action:

And with that, I begin a week off from work, my first time off since the Xmas period. We have plenty planned, including a barbecue for my birthday, so we should be having plenty of fun. Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth...