I went to the dentist for the first time since I left high school. Turns out I have no holes so am still filling-less. This is good news. Better news is that dentists have really changed.

1. Dentists care about their customers

When I arrived at the dentist, I had to fill out 10 pages of forms (well five anyway) they asked me my entire medical history, dental history and all sorts of potentially useful information. The final question was ‘are you scared of going to the dentist?’. (I said yes). This made me feel immediately more at ease. They REALISED that it’s not childish to be a little worried about someone poking round your mouth. Brownie point one.

2. Dentists, like doctors, run late

I wrote a while back about how rude doctors are to keep people waiting. My dentist was about 20 minutes late but the difference was that the entire time the receptionist kept me updated about my appointment “I’ll just go check to see where he is.” “he wont be a minute now” etc. This made me feel like I wasn’t just forgotten and they did know I was there. Simple but it worked. Brownie point two

3. Dentists use technology now

I was x-rayed from every angle and every time, even when I had two weird horse shoe shaped plastic things pulling my lips apart and a metal slicer thing holding my tongue down, I could see a screen showing me my xrays. Man are they cool! I have always had this weird desire to know what I look like inside. Now I do. Well my mouth anyway. I could see my teeth, my nose bones and my nose piercing which looks ten times cooler in an xray. In a very uncomfortable situation, I was totally distracted. It was awesome! Brownie point three

4. Dentists treat you like a human, not a tooth holder

My dentist talked to me through everything. Even when he was doing the weird tooth counting thing and mentioned that my wisdom teeth were ‘erupting’ (which caused a mild heart attack’), he explained that this was the technical term for ‘coming through the gum’. Once again, this relaxed me. There were no frightening grunts or ‘oh dear the molar number 5 is transposing in the molar 10 and at 2% angle’. I understood what was happening to me at all times. Brownie point four.

Even when he explained that he wanted to remove all four wisdom teeth and ‘no one makes friends with a dentist who extracts their wisdom teeth’, i STILL liked him. What a turn up for the books and it’s so simple.