Gentle Dental

Some completely normal things are just abnormal living in Korea- for instance, going to the dentist.

 

All soldiers get dental services on the Army base and all family members are referred to Korean dentists off the installation.  I went to a Korean dentist six months ago for a cleaning and I was struck by how clean, gentle, and normal it all seemed.  Yesterday, after my second cleaning, I'm convinced that was all a hoax and an act to illicit positive recommendations by me to my fellow Americans.

 

Here's what transpired yesterday in the chair:

 

1.  They covered my entire face with a mask that had only one opening, intelligently positioned over my mouth.  It was not unlike a thicker toilet seat cover, actually.   It meant no spying allowed. 

 

2.  Cleaning. Mostly by-the-book, using a power washer with an extremely thin stream of water to clean my teeth instead of scraping with the hook thingy.  But then, allegedly to clean the stains, the dental hygienist used a brine-like solution that I'm certain pickled my tongue.  No joking.  It was like gargling with ocean water infused with soy sauce and pickle juice.

 

3.  Fluoride treatment.  Not in the trays of strawberry or mint flavored goo like my childhood, but instead painted onto my teeth with a vaguely bubblegum flavor.  When the artist was finished, she gave me the mirror to look at my teeth.  They were scummy, dirty yellow!  Yellow like those pictures of smokeless tobacco users that were shown to us in elementary school to scare us away from ever chewing.  Yellow like the teeth of a skeleton of any cro-magnon man dug up by archeologists after thousands of years in the dirt.  Yellow like the guts of a rotten pumpkins splattered on the pavement.  Gross!  When my eyes, buggy from disbelief, focused on the info paper the hygenist handed me, I understood that this was merely a varnish meant to protect and de-sensitize my teeth and it needed to stay on for 12 hours before being brushed off.  No problem, aside from my social life and my evening's plans!  Before my next teeth cleaning I need to make less funny friends for exclusive use after dentist appointments- the friends I have now make me laugh too much and show off my nasty chompers!

 

Maybe my U.S. dental experiences have left me very sheltered, but yesterday's cleaning ROK-ed my socks off.  Bizarre.  Although there is one big advantage of the Korean dentist and our language barrier: no awkward small talk with the hygenist's hands in my mouth!