Published Meath Chronicle 23/04/2013.
At Navan Dental, the Dentists
like to meet their clients in the waiting room. It´s best to greet patients in
a relaxed environment where they feel secure among friends or other patients
before showing them to the treatment room, we always use first names. Eye contact
and a smile for new patients are particularly important to make a good first
impression.
That´s the theory, however, reality
can often shatter our illusions. From kids wrestling on the floor to heated
political debate you never know what you´ll find when you open the waiting room
door. The other day was no exception when I called a new patient, only to watch
a tall, raven-haired beauty unwind herself from the arm chair opposite and walk
towards me. Sleek lines and cheekbones like side-view mirrors, I struggled to
steer my eye contact and brake my falling jaw, meanwhile on the sofa men
jittered, women tutted loudly and the receptionists made big-eyes. This girl
was seriously attractive.
It was a tricky lead down the
corridor to the surgery but with every chime of her high-heels behind, my
warning bell began to tinkle. Something was wrong here, or missing, or both. Then
it dawned on me, she hadn´t smiled in those first seconds of meeting, not a
flicker. Dentists can learn a lot about a patient´s demeanour from this first
contact – whether a patient is nervous, relaxed or even spot a bit of work that
needs doing – when a smile is missing, despite distractions, it doesn´t escape
us. Now, studying her in the dental chair she appeared more sad than sexy and
even talking she made a conscious effort not to show her teeth. When I enquired
how we could help she finally opened her mouth and said, “I want my teeth
whitened I have a wedding in two weeks”.
It would have been easier to
white-wash the north face of the Eiger while attached to a bungee cord than
perform such a task; her teeth were a mess. Decayed, broken and missing, years
of neglect and I´d two weeks to turn it all around. I half expected a TV crew
to pop their heads around the door and ask silly questions like, “Will she need
veneers, Doc?” or “Can you rebuild her?” These quick-fix programmes have a lot
to answer for by creating impossible expectations and not telling us the whole
truth – dental treatment takes time, whitening can cause sensitivity and veneers sometimes fall off. Also drilling into sound tooth to place veneers is something Dentists
don´t consider lightly. And remember
we´re not talking about popping in a pair of silicone breasts here, the mouth
is a hazardous place, with heavy-duty forces amid an acidic swill of bacteria. But
still we are driven to improve and enhance, to fit in, keep up or dazzle with
that first impression.
This conditioning can take many
forms. From glossy magazines to the miracle makeovers we are mislead to neglect
our interiors, we forget to spring-clean or move the furniture about, instead
we insist upon painting our pebbledash the same colour as the neighbours. The
problem is some day you´ll have to invite someone inside or heaven forbid, a
professional peeps through your blinds.
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