This is the year of our Lord two thousand and ten; a new decade in a relatively new century. Putting a man on the moon is old news. There are teenagers who have never seen a telephone which is connected to wires – let alone a telephone with an actual round dial.

The internet is out of control and amazing. I can count the trees in my compound on Google Earth. I can chat with someone 5,000 miles away. Using my mailbox I can work for clients I have never even met – and get paid with money transfers directly to my bank account, all without leaving the comfort of Sofa Inc.

Surgeons can operate without cutting you open. They just make a little hole, insert a tube thingy with a camera on one end and a light somehow inside the camera and a laser beam all rolled up into one. So they see and cut and stitch and they are in and out of your innards before you are even aware you were under anaesthetic.  You can shift fat from your rear to your lips or vice versa – it seems the only thing we cannot do is share fat with thin people who want to put on weight.

So can someone please explain to me why a trip to the dentist is still such a soul-numbing, bone chilling, pee-in-your-pants and weep experience? Did they miss the bus? I took my son and nephew to the dentist and after seeing two patients come out, my son, who had never even been to a dentist before, began to cry and ask to be taken home. The mere aura of the waiting room had frightened him.

And I must admit he is not the only one. As soon as you sit back in that dental torture contraption they call a chair, and he swings his tray of lethal and sadistic looking instruments towards you, you can’t help but panic. And it does not help that many dentists have perfected a tone of voice which is much akin to a psychiatric nurse soothing a madman before he plunges a great big injection full of sedatives into his arm.

We are centuries beyond performing amputations on the battle field with nothing but a manual saw, a bottle of whisky and several men to hold the patient down. Why does dentist still equal pain? Is it lack of PR? Do dentists take professional pride in being more frightening than undertakers? Is the amount of horror you generate one of the benchmarks of how well your dental practice is doing?

I guess this is my way of saying I have to have 3 teeth filled and I am not budging till someone gives me a guaranteed pain-free project proposal. Or a large bottle of whisky.

Published on Sunday February 21, 2010