Dancing with Dr. Icare
OK, true confessions. I love my dentist, Dr. Icare* (*not his real name.) Not the kind of love you may be thinking of – more the kind of love an infant feels when her grandfather gives her, her first taste of chocolate icing. Hmm, maybe sugar is not the best analogy, this being dentist talk and all.
A bit of background info. I am absolutely phobic about being in the dental chair. And I am a metalhead – not in the rock music sense of the work, but as in having just about every tooth filled with a mercury amalgam. It never fails to amaze me that I don’t set off alarm bells when I go through the metal detector at the airport.
My parents got me regular dental care from birth to 1975, bless their hearts. But I was not a faithful brusher, I loved sweets, I never flossed, and the water in Belleville was not fluoridated in those days. All of this combined to make my yearly visits to the dentist a nightmare. In those days, there was no sense of child-centred dentistry. You climbed in the chair, opened your mouth as wide as you could, the dentist froze you as best he could and it was not perfect, and then he went to town on your mouth – with no breaks or check-ins.
When it was over, the receptionist gave me a sucker, and I vowed I would cut back on the sweets and brush my teeth three times a day. (No one flossed in those days – folks used toothpicks. In public. Glag!)
We had a wonderful dentist when we lived in Sudbury from 1983 to 2015 – I’ll call her Dr. Magical* (*not her real name.) And she was so amazing. She was gentle, she gave lots of freezing, she took her time… Still, whenever I had to have a filling done, tears would roll down my face and my body would involuntarily quiver. She even tried pumping me up with laughing gas – it didn’t do a thing. Inevitably there would be wee parts of my jaw that just didn’t freeze well, and I could barely get out of the chair at the end – I’d be so shaken up.
(Note: None of my kids are afraid of going to the dentist and they all loved Dr. Magical. The problem was me.)
Enter the year 2016. We hadn’t gone to the dentist since Laur retired in 2015. (Our dental benefits ended when Laur’s job did.) I was afraid to admit that my teeth hurt, but they did. And we were in a foreign country – the US of A. Que faire? Enter our friend Jack who highly recommended we go see Dr. Icare* in Nogales, Mexico – claiming he was the best dentist he had every had. One worrying point for us was that our friend had false teeth. Hmm. Thankfully his wife, Jill, who has all her own teeth and a beautiful smile, agreed wholeheartedly with Jack. She asserted, “I would never go to see anyone else.”
OK then. Off we went to the other side of the border – a mere 40 miles from here! Laurence and I had now entered the world of “dental tourism.” Nogales on the Mexican side is “interesting.” There are dental clinics, doctors’ offices, and pharmacies everywhere, and “hawkers” trying to get you to go in. But not so at Dr. Icare’s. His office is off the beaten track; it’s calm and clean. Dr. Icare has a great sense of humour. He called out, “And who is my next victim?” That would be me because otherwise I might have bolted. To where, I have no idea, but I was for sure jumpy.
Dr. Icare examined my teeth, cleaned them gently and thoroughly, cracked jokes, and then announced – to my chagrin – that I had FOUR cavities. I was not surprised, but I was horrified. I asked him if he could “knock me out” for my next visit. He looked at me curiously – Spanish being his first language, and not wishing to box me – and said, “No, but I can prescribe you a valium.” Which he did.
A week later Laur and I are driving back to Mexico with me clutching my pill. Dr. Icare said to take it 60 minutes before my appointment time, and I did. After 30 minutes, we had arrived at Nogales on the USA side and were ready to walk over. I tucked my arm through Laur’s. It was the valium talking. We got to the office and I practically teetered over to the dental chair and rolled myself in. I was still convinced this was going to make natural childbirth feel like a piece of cake…
He put on classical music and he froze my mouth, and that didn’t hurt – but it normally doesn’t. And then the drill started and I lay there waiting for him to hit that part of my mouth that cannot be frozen. As he got closer to it, I jumped just a little. He immediately stopped, gave me more freezing, and waited a bit. And then he continued, frequently checking in with me, saying things like, “Are we still friends?” … And then he said, “And you are finished!”
I couldn’t believe it. I did a sort of “leap/slide” out of the dental chair – doing my best impression of the Nutcracker suite ballerina. (Yes, the valium was still working.) And grinned as best I could, given that my jaws were completely frozen. Painless dentistry. Pure bliss.
Was there any difficulty in any of this? Certainly not the price tag – $200 for four fillings, the freezing and extra freezing, the extra time, and the valium! OK, eating my peanut butter sandwich on the car ride home was a little challenging because I wasn’t sure where and what I was chewing. And half my thermos of water, I dribbled down my front.
I got home and immediately wrote all the folks who live in this neck of the woods, whose email I have, encouraging them to go see Dr. Icare – if they didn’t have a dentist. I then had a nap. Note: I normally cannot nap – this was the lingering benefit of a benzodiazepam. And I woke up to find that pretty much all the folks I wrote to went to see Dr. Icare. And they adored him too.
Have I learned my lesson about sweets and brushing and flossing? Well, Saturday I went to a wedding, ate a ridiculous amount of cake with thick icing, and forgot to brush my teeth before going to bed, let alone floss. And our water isn’t fluoridated.
At this rate Dr. Icare and I will soon be exchanging Christmas cards… Hmm, no one does that anyone. Exchanging currency, for sure!
A bit of background info. I am absolutely phobic about being in the dental chair. And I am a metalhead – not in the rock music sense of the work, but as in having just about every tooth filled with a mercury amalgam. It never fails to amaze me that I don’t set off alarm bells when I go through the metal detector at the airport.
My parents got me regular dental care from birth to 1975, bless their hearts. But I was not a faithful brusher, I loved sweets, I never flossed, and the water in Belleville was not fluoridated in those days. All of this combined to make my yearly visits to the dentist a nightmare. In those days, there was no sense of child-centred dentistry. You climbed in the chair, opened your mouth as wide as you could, the dentist froze you as best he could and it was not perfect, and then he went to town on your mouth – with no breaks or check-ins.
When it was over, the receptionist gave me a sucker, and I vowed I would cut back on the sweets and brush my teeth three times a day. (No one flossed in those days – folks used toothpicks. In public. Glag!)
We had a wonderful dentist when we lived in Sudbury from 1983 to 2015 – I’ll call her Dr. Magical* (*not her real name.) And she was so amazing. She was gentle, she gave lots of freezing, she took her time… Still, whenever I had to have a filling done, tears would roll down my face and my body would involuntarily quiver. She even tried pumping me up with laughing gas – it didn’t do a thing. Inevitably there would be wee parts of my jaw that just didn’t freeze well, and I could barely get out of the chair at the end – I’d be so shaken up.
(Note: None of my kids are afraid of going to the dentist and they all loved Dr. Magical. The problem was me.)
Enter the year 2016. We hadn’t gone to the dentist since Laur retired in 2015. (Our dental benefits ended when Laur’s job did.) I was afraid to admit that my teeth hurt, but they did. And we were in a foreign country – the US of A. Que faire? Enter our friend Jack who highly recommended we go see Dr. Icare* in Nogales, Mexico – claiming he was the best dentist he had every had. One worrying point for us was that our friend had false teeth. Hmm. Thankfully his wife, Jill, who has all her own teeth and a beautiful smile, agreed wholeheartedly with Jack. She asserted, “I would never go to see anyone else.”
OK then. Off we went to the other side of the border – a mere 40 miles from here! Laurence and I had now entered the world of “dental tourism.” Nogales on the Mexican side is “interesting.” There are dental clinics, doctors’ offices, and pharmacies everywhere, and “hawkers” trying to get you to go in. But not so at Dr. Icare’s. His office is off the beaten track; it’s calm and clean. Dr. Icare has a great sense of humour. He called out, “And who is my next victim?” That would be me because otherwise I might have bolted. To where, I have no idea, but I was for sure jumpy.
Dr. Icare examined my teeth, cleaned them gently and thoroughly, cracked jokes, and then announced – to my chagrin – that I had FOUR cavities. I was not surprised, but I was horrified. I asked him if he could “knock me out” for my next visit. He looked at me curiously – Spanish being his first language, and not wishing to box me – and said, “No, but I can prescribe you a valium.” Which he did.
A week later Laur and I are driving back to Mexico with me clutching my pill. Dr. Icare said to take it 60 minutes before my appointment time, and I did. After 30 minutes, we had arrived at Nogales on the USA side and were ready to walk over. I tucked my arm through Laur’s. It was the valium talking. We got to the office and I practically teetered over to the dental chair and rolled myself in. I was still convinced this was going to make natural childbirth feel like a piece of cake…
He put on classical music and he froze my mouth, and that didn’t hurt – but it normally doesn’t. And then the drill started and I lay there waiting for him to hit that part of my mouth that cannot be frozen. As he got closer to it, I jumped just a little. He immediately stopped, gave me more freezing, and waited a bit. And then he continued, frequently checking in with me, saying things like, “Are we still friends?” … And then he said, “And you are finished!”
I couldn’t believe it. I did a sort of “leap/slide” out of the dental chair – doing my best impression of the Nutcracker suite ballerina. (Yes, the valium was still working.) And grinned as best I could, given that my jaws were completely frozen. Painless dentistry. Pure bliss.
Was there any difficulty in any of this? Certainly not the price tag – $200 for four fillings, the freezing and extra freezing, the extra time, and the valium! OK, eating my peanut butter sandwich on the car ride home was a little challenging because I wasn’t sure where and what I was chewing. And half my thermos of water, I dribbled down my front.
I got home and immediately wrote all the folks who live in this neck of the woods, whose email I have, encouraging them to go see Dr. Icare – if they didn’t have a dentist. I then had a nap. Note: I normally cannot nap – this was the lingering benefit of a benzodiazepam. And I woke up to find that pretty much all the folks I wrote to went to see Dr. Icare. And they adored him too.
Have I learned my lesson about sweets and brushing and flossing? Well, Saturday I went to a wedding, ate a ridiculous amount of cake with thick icing, and forgot to brush my teeth before going to bed, let alone floss. And our water isn’t fluoridated.
At this rate Dr. Icare and I will soon be exchanging Christmas cards… Hmm, no one does that anyone. Exchanging currency, for sure!