In the late 80s my then current dentist did pressure me into having all of my wisdom teeth removed. For me, this remains as quite a saga I still, on special occasion, will tell people over beer and campfires, like an old war story...... except, as far as I know, I was never formally and consciously enlisted into any war..... and I don't even have a garage, you can call home and ask my wife (that I don't have ;) So sit back, perhaps get your popcorn and snacks, and enjoy, at my expense ;)
This dentist had only been my regular dentist during the previous few months. A few years prior I'd relocated to this area of south florida, a time when my teeth were mostly not bothering me, so I had not been regularly seeing any dentist. Try not to let the fact that this doctor was a native Iranian affect your impressions and thoughts...... for several years after the fact, I tried, and like people are so prone to saying "ahhh, just a coincidence!" ;) A co-worker referred me to this guy, having raved about such good work he did; Coworker was Maltese fwiw. So I scheduled a cleaning visit. Before I knew it, I had myself a new regular dentist, and over the course of severl months dentist was regularly opining about the difficulty he had cleaning my teeth "because your teeth are too crowded, they are being squeezed together by your impacted wisdom teeth". He even took specific X-rays, repeatedly, and held them in front of my face to show me the offending crowding-out boney-impacted felons. Just goes to show, by example, what the ultimate affects can be after exposing one to repeat and steady conditioning of a particular thoughtform. When I first started to see this dentist, my teeth - even the many previously drilled/filled by another far away dentis, had not been bothering me, but the first round of conditioning led me to be convinced that this dentists needed to restore most of the many amalgam fillings I'd had prior to ever seeing him the first time. After the months of being exposed to his consistent routine and patter, he'd gradually began working in some new material - the "you need to have your wisdom teeth out!" material. Eventually I caved and gave him the go ahead to schedule the 4 wisdom "rear molars" to be removed. In retrospect, this turned out to be one of the most ghastly procedures I've ever experienced being done to me.
From the getgo, this day and the "procedure done to me" did not at all go the way the dentist had casually prepared me. When he scheduled the work, he planned to remove all 4 teeth during one sitting, having alloted a total of 1.5 hours......... you do the math, not much fancy theory required. I may be a dummy but this implied to me that he expected these teeth to come out rather easily. On the weeks and days leading up to the visit, my friends and co-workers were of course razzing me about this "oooooh, scary, painful situation". Side note - why do so many people seem to be generally okay with this kind of cultural behavior?. I confidently fired back "go ahead, joke all you want, you're not scaring me, I've done the math!". Just seems odd to me that this is so common of a way for people in society to act towards somebody they know as a friend. It seems odd people often do these things supposedly as a result of mere "kidding" and good natured fun. As it turned out for me, the reality began to set in the moment I showed up for this appointment. I walked into the dentist's office feeling spry and chipper, expecting to be gone in 1.5 hours..... cause I did the math. So I walked through the front door only to crash headfirst into the reality of bad omen. Upon seeing me the receptionist (wife of dentist) immediately informed that my presense had just immediately reminded her that she's forgotten to properly pencile in my appointment that she remembered makign with me over a mont prior. So in addition to all the build up from the previous razzing and the thoughts this can conjure up, I then had to sit in an isolated quiet room about 70 minutes waiting for them to scramble around and make last-minute adjustments to the schedule for the other people they'd mistakenly scheduled over top of my appointment. Eventually we got down to brass tacks and a big mouth full of novacaine plunged into my lower jaw bone - right rear quadrant. Just to shorten this already logn story, it literally took dr. dentist a bit over 3 hours to get the first one out, during which I ended up with 3 hands up to the wrist and a variety of cutting and pulling tools in my mouth - his two plus one of his assistant's. He'd been reluctant during the first hour and a half to ask her assistance.... a manly thing of course, but as the situation wore on and his frustation increased, he eventually called her into service. Had there been room, I think he would have gladly allowed a 4th hand into my mouth. Ever try having your mouth held and pried open as wide as it can go, for 3 hours straight, while the jaw/head is being yanked, twisted and jerked back and forth, up and down, all the while scraping and gouging motions are being made inside the mouth? There were several moments that I could literally feel the right lower section of my jaw bone flexing.... it was at this point the novacaine was definitely starting to wear off. Perhaps this is why it was only then I first began to get concerned in ernest. By this time the entire right side of my face and head was swollen like a crazed squirrel. At that final moment of release, when he finally got the tooth removed, he held it in front of my face, still gripped between some shiney but otherwise nasty looking plyers, still dripping a bit with a few strands of frayed flesh dangling, and exclaimed "i've NEVER seen a bleeping tooth like that in my life!".
Doc was no doubt taking this worse than I was. He was of course all sweaty, breathing eratically, and quite worked up over the fact that this tooth had laid naked in front of me his overall lack of surgical skills. When he calmed down a bit, he sheepishly lamented "gee, I guess I should have sent you to an oral surgeon". In retrospect, he shouldn't have sent me anywhere, these teeth had been causing me no problems at all. Perhaps they would have in the future, but all these years later I'm convinced the only reason he arranged to remove them was because 1) he recognized from my previous first few visits with him that I had what was then considered to be a sterling health-insurance provider, and therefore saw me as easy pickings; 2) I was just another dumb patient who wouldn't know any better no matter how he decided to explain to me "oh, these wisdom teeth of yours need to come out, all 4 of them".
It took about 3 weeks for my head and jaw to heal enough to make the return visit. In comparison, the other 3 WTs came out fairly easily - only 45 minutes for #2, #s 3 & 4 came out within an hour total.......yep, despite it all, I was still dumbed. It would still be a bit more than another 10 years before the memory of this drama coupled with other newer dramas I was to experience from other fronts of the establishement before I would finally began to show signs of waking up to the kinds of establishment nonsense taking place all around us. This is no doubt an extreme case. Like the poster before indicated, their experience was nothing like mine, so I do not want to portray all dentists as evil....... just most of them ;)