Whether you’re having your wisdom teeth removed, or perhaps you’ve signed up for the excruciating experience of gum surgery, or you’re like me, enjoying the dental equivalent of the Full Monty; complete with extractions, implants and bone graphs.We can all relate on some level.
Dental surgery is quite possibly the most invasive surgery with the exception of a full rectal exam; that for some is comparable to a tax audit.
Personally though, I think I’d rather opt for the audit.
The idea of surgery of any kind is frightening and unnerving, but it has more to do with the perception of your environment, or the theater in which your procedure is taking place. For example, any surgery other than oral surgery typically is performed in an operating room. Let’s take a quick tour and compare the environment, instruments and protocol used in an operating room:
1) First off, you’re comfortably reclining on a gurney with your hair neatly tucked up under a paper shower cap, while you’re lovingly nestled under a warm blanket.
2) After they wheel you into the operating room, you’re cordially greeted by your doctor, who then introduces you to the second most important person in the room, your anesthesiologist, who then becomes your new best friend.
3) As you lay there awaiting the IV, you can faintly hear the humming of machinery in the background, and the only instruments present, are the usual scalpel and vascular clamps.
4) And without too much ado, and before you can say Rip Van Winkle, you’re safely in dreamland.
Now, for the sake argument, let’s review your environment in the operating room provided by the dentist:
1) Upon checking in with the receptionist, you then sit down in the waiting room and try desperately to distract yourself from the impending anxiety attack that is now rising from the pit of your stomach
2) After what seems like an eternity, they call your name, you are then escorted down a long hallway, or the Green Mile, of examination rooms. As you’re led into your assigned room, the assistant then points to a chair that bears a striking resemblance to THE ELECTRIC CHAIR as she softly whispers,” have a seat the doctor will be with you shortly.” And then quickly disappears.
3) While waiting, you quickly survey the room, first you notice the extremely bright light positioned on a jointed pole directly overhead, that I think doubles as an interrogating tool used by the police department. It’s at that point, your eyes are distracted by the glint of metal, which is coming from the tray directly in front of you that's holding a series of sharply pointed instruments one could construe as torture devices; hence my earlier reference to Dr Mengele.
4) And of course there’s that lag time, in between the assistant showing you in and the doctor’s arrival, giving you ample opportunity to change your mind and make a quick exit. But of course, before you can react, the doctor shows up to find you white knuckled to the chair staring into space like a doe in head lights. At that moment, he greets you holding a hypodermic needle followed by two of the most painful words in the English language, "OPEN WIDE!”
Cut to a commercial break… The 2th Fairy
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