When I lived in the UK, I went to the same dentist from the age of 2 to around 30. Yes, the same guy. Now, don’t get me wrong, he was a very lovely man and I grew to like him, however I think that in his many years of dentistry, there clearly came a point when he was just ‘over it’. I’m not quite sure when this point was, but I’m guessing that it was somewhere between deciding it was easier to just yank out my bad tooth than fill it and giving me black fillings when white ones were available. Like I said, he was a lovely man and I have no fear of the dentist since he clearly made me at ease, but it was time for him to retire and time for me to move on.
Goodies and Gadgets and Grins Oh My!
When I first moved to Australia, I went to a local dentist who was pretty old, but the surgery was like nothing I’d seen before. It had TV’s on the ceiling so you could watch them when you were laying there. The whole place seemed funky and much cooler than anything my old dentist ever had, so I was pretty happy with the service. Little did I know however there was even more out there… yes, to a gadget loving tech-head like me, the thought of a dentist with cool toys made me geekily excited. Imagine my glee then when I went to Hope Island Dental Care on the Gold Coast this week to get a check-up and a filling. That surgery is like a spaceship of cool stuff. I remember the days when getting a filling meant that you’d get numerous injections to numb your mouth then have this odd hard pressing and pushing feeling near the end when the dentist pushed the black shiny stuff into your tooth. Those days are clearly long gone and dentists now use magical lights and god knows what else to make your tooth feel healthy and new.
Magical Lights and Guess the Filling
When I was getting my filling today, the dentist used this magical blue light thing for something… anyone know what? I have no idea, but I liked it. I liked that he was using magic lights and equipment on my tooth, but mainly I liked that I didn’t even feel the injection go in. When he’d finished filling my tooth, I couldn’t even tell which one it was. Seriously, this guy was meticulous and he treated my tooth filling like a work of art. I can’t see any blending or difference of color on any of my teeth and it feels bloody amazing considering it’s just been drilled. I can honestly say that it was the best dentist experience I’ve ever had. This totally sounds like an advert, but I swear it’s not. It just got me thinking about how much technology improves things and this was a perfect example of it.
How Has Technology Made Your Experiences Better?
I use technology constantly. There’s never a day goes past when I’m not using one of the latest gadgets and when I was laying in my electric reclining dentist chair getting the magic light shone in my mouth, it made me realise how much I love technology. I got an x-ray taken there too and it was on the screen in seconds showing any cavities or other problems with my teeth. It’s no wonder that my dentist of nearly 30 years was over the whole experience. He probably had no bloody idea how to use half of the new technology that was available to him, so just stuck with his old ways. What about you guys? Are you early adopters of new technology or do you tend to just go with what you’re used to? Have any experiences you hate been made better because of technology? Who knew going to the dentist could be so interesting.