Dental Woes

I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from my loyal readers asking me why I haven’t been ranting lately. Well, my dear friends, would you have the energy to talk [much less rant] if your gums were swollen and painful? That’s right. Despite the Sensodyne and the brushing-for-three-minutes-and-flossing-for-five-minutes-twice-daily routine, my oral health still leaves much to be desired.

“Why don’t you just go to the dentist?” was MOH’s irritated response yesterday, when I complained about my sore gums for the gazillionth time. “’Coz he’s the root cause of all this trouble,” came my tired whine. That, my dear friends, is the sum and substance of this sorry rant.

My saga goes back a decade or two [Shh! I’m not telling you the exact year, lest you figure out my real age] when I was still living in Mumbai with my folks. Part of being an only child granted me the right to eat one whole Cadbury’s 5-star bar all by myself at least three times a week. As anyone in their right minds will tell you, all that chocolate and caramel did not help my teeth any. To cut a long story short, I ended up with a cavity in my tooth. Those were the days when people [in India] did not really visit a dentist except at about 50-odd years of age [to get their teeth pulled out and have dentures put in]. Off and on some poor soul [read girl] in her late twenties or early thirties might go and get some braces put in if she found it really difficult to get married owing to a pronounced overbite. That being the dental culture then, I naturally accepted my cavity as a part of life and left it alone. I did not even give it a second thought till I met MOH and decided to tie the knot with him.

“Dental work is really expensive in the US,” exclaimed well-meaning friends at the software consultant firm [where I worked at that time]. “Get all the dental work you need done in Mumbai itself. Once you are here, remember we can’t afford to go to the dentist. I don’t have dental insurance,” advised MOH. Of course, I did not understand all this mumbo-jumbo about costs and insurance, but since eight out of ten people were giving me the same spiel, I decided to go pay Dr. Desai [the guy who put my dad’s dentures in] a visit.

That mild mannered dentist took one look at my 10-year-old cavity and told me that he’d fill it up with a simple silver amalgam. I gave him the go-ahead. He did his work in less than 15 minutes and charged me Rs. 500 for his efforts. I came home a happy camper.

Years later, after we got our green cards, MOH took up employment with a local US-based company. The most exciting thing about this job [for us] was that we’d now have dental insurance.

My first visit to local a dentist’s office was a complete nightmare. I walked into the office dreaming about sparkling white teeth like those of Vanessa Williams, all thanks to the bi-annual “free cleaning” services I was now entitled to. “Those fillings look really old,” exclaimed the hygienist who looked like a cross between my Italian neighbor and Baywatch’s Pamela Anderson [she had perky fake boobs]. “If you don’t get caps put in soon, you’ll have bone density loss and you could end up losing all your teeth before you hit 40,” she told me in a grave voice. “What?!” I shrieked in shock and disbelief.

“I don’t want to end up looking like my dad,” I told MOH that evening. “Dad can’t even eat the besan ka laddoos my mom makes with his fake teeth” I moaned. “But the insurance does not cover crowns and it’ll cost me $ 2500,” said MOH. “Think about it; why don’t you go to India and get the dental work done there?” he reasoned. “It’ll only cost us a fraction, and with $2500 I could easily pay for you and the brat to fly to India next month.”

We argued back and forth, and finally I did go to India. There, I eschewed old Dr. Desai’s office and instead patronized a sharp young doctor with a swanky office. He was US-returned to boot. I came back from that vacation sporting a brand new crown on my old cavity. I believed that would be the end of my troubles.

Fate [or rather, my dentist] had something else in store for me. During my next visit he asked me, “Where did you get that crown put in? The stuff looks like something they used to have in the USSR during the cold war days; really sub-standard stuff. It’ll have to come off.” Sigh!You can’t really argue when you are lying down on a dentist’s chair with your mouth clamped open and a shiny light blinding you completely. He went to work on my poor tooth. Off came the “sub-standard” Commie crown and in went a brand new American capitalist specimen. Was that the end of the saga? You bet, no.

Months later, when I went back on yet another visit, I learned that the other dentist had “quit the group,” and that I was “being assigned to another dentist.” My new dentist wanted to take a look into my mouth [to fulfill his curiosity, I imagine]. No sooner had he taken a peek into my open mouth, he asked, “Did Dr. R put in that crown for you?” I nodded in the affirmative. “These young doctors, I tell you; with their new fangled ideas and all,” he shook his head. “Sigh! How’re you managing with that crown? It’s really all wrong for you. It’ll have to come off.”

What more can I say? The cure seems to have become the disease and I am in constant agony. Maybe on my next trip to India, I’ll simply have my mom rub clove oil on my gums.