Numb Me, Drill Me, Floss Me, Bill Me

Ten points to whoever caught on to the title of my post being the old Weird Al Yankovic parody of U2's Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me from the Batman Forever soundtrack. You know I still haven't seen Batman Forever... or Batman Returns... or Batman. I have however seen the TV show from the 60s *POW* with Adam West et al. *BIFF*

Holy Ohio State University College of Dentistry Batman!! So my student health insurance is supposed to get me a dental check up and cleaning for the nominal fee of $15, quite reasonable by any standards. I figured that'd be a good thing to do before heading out to Chicago. You know, dazzle the employer with sparkling, plaque free teeth and walk away with a full-time offer on the strength of that alone. That's the plan anyway. So far though, a week in, I see no signs of my pristine oral condition being any sort of advantage.

I'd like to talk to you today about my teeth and their experience at the highly regarded Ohio State University College of Dentistry (OSUCOD). In order to provide some context, I will recount a typical visit to a dentist's clinic back home, in Karachi.

Karachi:
*walk into dentist’s office*
Dentist: What do you want?
Me: Clean my teeth, dammit
Dentist: All of them?
Me: Yes, dammit.
Dentist: Alright then.
(15 minutes later)
*walk out of dentist’s office*

And now,

OSUCOD:
First, you have your teeth examined by a dental student. Then

• Re-examined and checked by several qualified and experienced dentists (a couple of them looked a little senile... so incredibly experienced they must have been).
• X-rayed. About 5 different ways. I've never had so much padding in my mouth. I must have looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger's bloated baby brother. There is not a bone in my mouth or jaw that has not been photographed.
• Pressure tested or something crazy complicated. Six different measurements from each tooth.
• Gum health type thing tested. I don't even remember what arcane tricks they pulled to get that done. There was all sorts of poking and prodding. I can't remember a time I felt so violated.

On top of this, they took a COMPLETE medical history. Seriously complete.
"Do you still have your tonsils?"
"I don't know. Look and see."

It turns out that I do still have my tonsils. It was my adenoids that were removed. Those are dangerous. They're usually only found in space, you know, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. How they got up my nose, I will never understand.

"When did you have your adenoids removed?"
"When I was really little."
"Could you be more specific?"
"Not really."

That whole rigmarole took about twenty minutes. And the joy and happiness that was the rest of the lines above took all of three hours. Notice no cleaning was done. Because they knew right away that I was going to have to COME BACK FOR ANOTHER DAMN APPOINTMENT. New patient, teaching hospital, blah blah. All I wanted were shiny teeth. Instead I got 180 minutes of protocol. Anyway, I had no choice. I scheduled ANOTHER DAMN APPOINTMENT.

Nine days later I walked back in for The Long-Awaited Cleaning.

Which took almost three hours and twenty minutes… the length of the movie Titanic. What's sad is I can't decide which was the more painful experience. What's scary is that it sometimes takes TWELVE hours to clean people's mouths (so said Erin, the poor dental student forced to spend six hours with me). I was *lucky* to be done so quick. All I can say is Americans must have some terrible oral hygiene. Ha. Going to civilize the world and can't even civilize their own mouths. Ha.

But hey, 380 minutes in, I was done! Teeth clean. Two dental students and fifty qualified dentists at the Ohio State College of Dentistry officially know my teeth better than I would want to know them myself. Good for them.