I went to the Dentist for the first time in about 4 or 5 years the other day. I was prompted to go because my upper right wisdom tooth sort of crumbled when I threw a quarters worth of chicle tabs in my mouth after lunch. I had been planning a trip to the dentist for a year or so, and just never got around to it. This event helped me re-arranged my priorities. The first trip I went to my regular dentist from when I was a child. He looked at it took and X-ray and suggested it be extracted. Said it was fairly well decayed. So today I will have #1 extracted, hopefully that isn't too bad. But I decided in the mean time I should have a checkup and a cleaning. Mike had previously told me about Doctor Mel Burchman, and his hi-tech dentistry, no drills, etc... So I decided to check it out. Well all I can say about my experience with Dr. Burchman is that it was phenomenal. I am used to the 1 - 2 hour appointment for x-ray, cleaning, poking and scaling of the teeth. Where you spend 95% of the time with a dental technician and the dentist pokes his head in to sign off on their work. Well the trip to see Dr. High Tech was quite different. I was there for no longer than 40 minutes. The X-ray was done at a single shot, rather than sticking a bunch of film in your mouth and then pointing that X-Ray gun at your head. They had this device that just spun around your head, and put your full mouth X-Ray on a single piece of film, and it was placed where you could see it. Then about 30 minutes were spent with the Doctor examining the X-Ray, finding all the cavities, I have 10 :-( And showing you pictures of the decaying teeth up on the rooms TV. Then there was the best part, the cleaning. He used this high powered sandblaster, basically just a strong water pick, and cleaned all my teeth in about 3 minutes, with no scraping and minimal gum poking, then I was finished.
I went back yesterday to have some of the cavities filled, again it was about 30 minutes with the Doctor, where he used an even stronger sandblaster to removed the decayed material from my teeth, and then patched up the three newly formed holes with some type of natural colored filling and a laser. No novicaine, and only a couple short periods of slight discomfort. When he was sandblasting the tooth, I felt a hot sensation when he was lasering the tooth, and finally the buffer/polisher he used to clean up the patch jobs a little was slightly uncomfortable. But the entire visit took exactly 35 minutes. I need to go back twice more to finish the job, but I can see myself going to this dentist twice a year for my cleanings, because it is so quick and hassle-free. That should prevent these marathons of cavity filling.