I went to the dentist today for the first time in more than eight years.  Thanks to my experiences as a child getting fourteen teeth pulled at the request of orthodontists, I am terrified of dentists.  I was literally shaking when I sat in the chair today.  No one takes this phobia seriously.  Shame on you if you don’t.

Anyway,  I finally worked up the courage to go in for a cleaning today.  The staff was reasonably nice, and tried to make me feel comfortable.  I sat through what seemed like an eternity getting my teeth scraped, sweating, and involuntarily flinching the entire time.

The last time I went to the dentist, I was living in Philadelphia, about 8 years ago.  I was moving to Boston, and was about to lose my health insurance from work, as I was going back to school.  This dentist cleaned my teeth and told me I had three cavities, and told me I should make an appointment to get them filled.  I left town instead.

But today, the Atlanta dentist said, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, because we may not see you for another eight years, but you don’t have a single cavity.”  I was surprised.  I didn’t say anything about the Philly dentist, I took my free toothbrush and happily left.  By the way, he also made a ton of comments about the amount of teeth I was missing.

As I was driving home, congratulating myself on not having to get six root canals as I had imagined, I started thinking about my disappearing cavities.  Admittedly, I already have a low opinion of dentists.  Was the Philly dentist incompetent?  Is the Atlanta dentist incompetent?  If I can’t trust someone with a DDS to accurately examine my teeth, why should I listen to anything they say?

Here are the options, in my mind:

1. The Philly dentist made up the cavities in order to make more money by getting me to have unnecessary dental work done.   This makes him a bad doctor.
2. The Atlanta dentist didn’t see the cavities, despite the ridiculous amount of x-rays that were taken today.  This makes him an incompetent doctor.
3. The Atlanta dentist saw the cavities but neglected to tell me about them, rightly realizing that if he told me that I had to have tons of dental work done, I would get scared and never go back.  By building my confidence by not telling me I had cavities, he could get me back in in six months for the next cleaning and then lay it on me.  This makes him untrustworthy, even if his intentions are good.
4. Despite my lack of regular flossing, the cavities magically disappeared.

I’m going with Option #3 right now.  If that is true, can a doctor really do that?  Shouldn’t he be required to tell me everything he discovers about my body?  That’s what I’m paying him for, isn’t it?  It seems unethical to withhold information like that.

I bet Option #1 is the most likely, and it confirms what I have long suspected about the medical profession, and dentistry in particular: that doctors are more concerned about making money than they are about their patents’ health.

Am I too cynical?  Perhaps.  But where did my cavities go?