Mo-laughing matter

So this guy was talking about his trip to the dentist….

The 45 minutes he spent with the hygienist and the 15 minutes with the dentist and the £95 bill and the buying of the new toothbrush and accessories…

How he’s got to go back in 5 weeks after he’s been cleaning his teeth with the new electric toothbrush and the new teeny in-betweeny orthodontic brushes he’s been told to get…

And have you heard the latest? No, me neither. It’s now recommended not to rinse the toothpaste out of your mouth. Nope, you just LEAVE IT THERE

What ridiculous fresh hell is this?

First Brexit

Then Trump

Now you’ve got to leave the toothpaste in your mouth….

Oh and when you go to bed, just get a little nub of toothpaste and massage your gums with it.  So you go to bed smelling, tasting and no doubt feeling, a bit menthol.

My reaction?

Total Princess Anne. Naff off.

It’s supposed to be all about the teeth but a lot of it is all about the money with private dentists.

Basically this guy’s just spent £120 on a dental maintenance kit because the dentist, who will be charging about £150 to see him twice, deems it necessary.

They are unashamedly making their fortunes squeezing the spondulix out of hapless patients who take everything they say deadly seriously, even though you cannot die of bad teeth. Well, perhaps you can but the simple remedy would just be to remove them.

But no, no-one takes out dodgy teeth these days.

A couple of pals who have had “root canal work” have been relieved of more than £500 for the privilege of keeping that single molar near the back that no-one sees anyway.

One pal, who was quoted £650 for the essential root canal work she needed, actually thought “Wait a cotton-pickin moment… isn’t that a tad expensive?”

She’s from Guildford so no she didn’t think those precise words but stick with me as I attempt to pique your interest.

“My dentist is good” I told her. “I went to him about a year after I got frightened to death by a woman dentist.”

She was supposed to be doing a filling for me but I swear she was going to drill into the bottom of my tooth until she reached the earth’s core.  It was still tooth-hurty  (the traditional Chinese dentist appointment time) three months later.

“£650 sounds a lot for one tooth. I mean, how long can it take?” I said.

“I bet my dentist would give you a quote for a root canal.”

He did. He quoted her nearly £400 for the same work. Still eye-watering but hey, a saving of more than £250.

She rang her dentist and left a message, very fairly and amicably, I thought, to say she was swapping dentists to get the work done at a more reasonable price.

That same evening, her expensive dentist phoned her at 6.30pm and berated and cajoled her for half an hour.

His tactics ran the gamut of “Why on earth are you changing dentists?” to “What’s he actually quoted you for?” to “Well, at that price he can’t be much of a dentist” with dire warnings that she was effectively placing her dodgy but prized molar in the hands of a snake-oil specialist.

Quite remarkable that a professional registered dentist could behave like a double-glazing salesman who lost out on the deal.

I thought she could have reported him to the dentists professional body but she didn’t. She just happily got her molar done and saved £250.  It wasn’t even Black Friday.