Point of View
Dental patient mouths off about hygienists
By Carl Heintze
I have this problem with my dentist. Well, it's not actually with my dentist. It's with his dental hygienist. You know what a dental hygienist is. Usually it's a she--I've never met a male hygienist, although there may be some out there somewhere--and she is usually young and attractive.
I don't know how it is at your dentist, but at mine hygienists tend to come and go. My impression is that hygienists are both long-termers and free-lancers. The long-termers stay with one dentist a long time. The free-lancers work when they want to. Whatever the case, hygienists I have met are of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds.
The one I knew the longest became a friend. I knew all about her family and their ups and downs over the years. She, alas, died several years ago. Since her passing my hygienist experiences, if I can put them that way, have been with a variety of young women, all of them attractive and very competent.
My guess is that dentists like to have female hygienists, just as airlines like to have female flight attendants. It tends to calm the patient and/or the passenger.
If this young lady doesn't panic, why should I? The plane is not going down, nor are all your teeth going to have to come out, right?
Most people--if they can afford it at today's dental care prices--tend to dread going to the dentist. I'm not sure why this is so, either, except that your teeth tend to be a sensitive part of your anatomy, and you are pretty helpless when the dentist has a drill and a major portion of his hand down your throat.
You can't talk back or complain, short of an anguished grunt or two. Verbal complaints are more likely with a medical doctor, only when he or she is checking some delicate portion of your anatomy, your prostate, for instance. Not so with a dentist.
But, somehow, when you meet the dental hygienist, she gives you a happy smile and invites you into her chair, you are disarmed. She is so nice, surely nothing can be wrong on this visit.
Bad guess.
The first thing the hygienist does is, of course, have a look inside your mouth. This is accompanied by a frown. Your first pang of guilt appears.
"You're not brushing enough," she says.
"I brush twice a day, " I gurgle. I can't talk. All I can do is gurgle.
She ignores me.
"Do you floss?" she says.
Another inarticulate gurgling reply on my part.
"You ought to floss after every meal," she says. She begins raking her tool over my gums.
"You don't have gum disease--yet."
There's a significant pause between disease and "yet," and you know that it is lurking just around the bend and, sure as hell, you are going to get it if you don't floss and brush.
By now I wish I could crawl out of the chair and run and hide somewhere. I've been found guilty on three counts of dental abuse. But more is to come.
While she is scaling off the plaque, especially on my front teeth, she is asking if I know "you have so much plaque."
I try to say, "How would I know how much plaque I have?"
I can't even seen my navel, let alone my lower front teeth, even with a dental mirror.
And, of course, somewhere in the plaque process she pauses, consults the chart of my teeth on a tray beside her--which looks like a map of a World War I battlefield .
She shakes her head and over her face comes The Look.
I know what The Look means. It means a cavity, dental caries, a hole in what's left of my teeth--which is not very much--and a bill for at least a hundred dollars or so before we are through. The only thing worse will be when the dentist himself comes in, takes a look, shakes his head, also gives me The Look and says, "You need another crown."
I can hear the cash register cranking up the bill, because, alas, I am at the age where crowns are pretty much a way of life. The only redeeming grace is that he didn't say I needed a root canal, too. That would have boosted the price into the stratosphere of dentistry.
So, all in all, despite the grace and charm of the dental hygienist I have been tried and found guilty of dental neglect.
I vow before the next visit I will improve my behavior. I will floss. I will brush. I will use a mouthwash and a toothpaste that contains a fluoride.
But, of course, somewhere along the way I will fail. And, once again, I will be found wanting by my dental hygienist.
If only, I think, she were less attractive or pleasant. Then, somehow, I could feel like my dental guilt is justified. As it is now, it all rests on me, or rather in my mouth and I know that, even though I vow repentance and throw myself on the mercy of the dental court, I'm still going to be up before the unflinching eye of the hygienist again in six months.
Makes you want keep your mouth closed, doesn't it?
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
