On Dentistry: a Mouthful of Memento Mori

I trust dentists because they always give me bad news. I discovered this reassuring fact during a recent teeth-cleaning appointment—the first I’d had in two years. It was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. I showed up five minutes late and highly caffeinated.

I walked into the sterile examination room and lay back on the dentist’s chair, crinkling the sanitary paper spread out on the seat. I asked the hygienist to please turn off both TV monitors mounted in two corners of the room. Why any examination room needed one TV, much less two, is beyond me.

The hygienist gave a barely audible huff and extinguished the monitors. She clipped on my bib, picked up a small round mirror in one hand and a wire-thin pickax in the other, and leaned over me assuming the plaque-hacking position. Blinded by her headlamp, I opened my mouth wide.

Sorry, doctor, it’s been two years since my last appointment…I ran through my mental list of questions, twenty-four months in the making. I was the poor hygienist’s nightmare: a plaque-laden, over-curious graduate student ready to make gargling conversation.

“I dring coffee. What are some tha-ngs I can do to keek my teeth hite?”

Clink clink. The hygienist shrugged.

“Hm, well, if you drink coffee, stains are going to accumulate over time.”

Clink, clink.

She inserted the spit-sucking tube in my mouth before I could mount my defense.

Whirrrrrr slurrrrrrrp!

“I try to only dring one cup a day!”

“That’s good.” She pulled the spit sucker out and went back to the plaque hacking. “There are small things you can do, like rinse your teeth with water afterwards or drink through a straw.”

Scratch, scratch.

“Avoid sipping on it throughout the day. Things like that that limit direct contact. But if you drink coffee, your teeth are going to get stained.”

Splink, splink.

Spit flooded the trench beneath my tongue. Maybe my mouth was watering, thinking about coffee. I felt like an oversized baby, spittling all over my bib like that. I tried to remind myself I was a responsible adult.

Whirrrrr slurrrrrp.

Mouth dry, I squeezed in a rebuttal before the hygienist could reinsert the pickax.

“What about all the whitening toothpastes you see at the grocery store?”

Clink, clink.

“Most of that’s just marketing. They’re all basically the same.”

“Rearry?”

“We recommend any one with fluoride.” Huff huff. “You get that, and you’ll be pretty much all right.”

Clink clink.

“Wha about—”

Pfflunk. Ouch. The pickax slipped and sliced my back right gum. I wondered if the hygienist did it on purpose. I gag-swallowed my question with my spit, which now had a faintly red-iron aftertaste.

Clink, clink.

“Did you have a permanent retainer on your backside of your bottom front teeth at some point?”

“Yesff.”

“I can tell. There’s still some residual glue. It’s accumulated more stains than the other teeth.”

I marveled, sinking into silence. In dentistry, if nowhere else, decisions still had consequences. The hygienist moved on to my top teeth.

Clink, clink.

The plaque scraping went much faster. Nothing made a dental appointment less efficient than talking, I realized. No wonder the office put two TVs in the room.

“Looks good, no cavities,” the hygienist said finally, settling back into her chair and sheathing her weapons. “I can tell you have good home care.”

No cavities! I felt a warm rush of triumph. I beamed a residually glued smile. The hygienist took the next five minutes to brush my teeth with a delicious spearmint toothpaste.

Whirrrrr slurrrrp! She shut down the spit sucker.

“Ok, I’m going to call in Dr. Hooks now. One moment.”

Hooks. The name sounded sinister.

One minute later, a red-faced man in a blue mask and white lab coat hustled into the room. He mounted the chair and whipped out his metal pokers in one muscly sweep.

“Hey there. Open wide; let’s take a look.”

Dr. Hooks poked around my mouth for 10 seconds. He let the spit swell into a sub-tonsillar tidal bulge, so there was no hope of asking questions. This man was a professional.

“All right, no cavities, but looks like you have a bit of gum recession in front of your bottom center teeth.”

“Ah-uh.”

Clink clack.

“Looks all right for now, but we want to make sure plaque doesn’t build up in the recession.”

“Ah-uh.”

Clink pfflunk.

“So you’ll want to be careful not to brush too hard down there.”

“Is there anyfthing I can dof to stop it?”

“No… Just make sure you have a toothbrush with soft bristles. The recession will get worse over time. It’s just a matter of keeping it as clean as possible.”

He put the spit sucker in my mouth, a second before the spit tide surged over the back of my bottom teeth. Slurrrrrp. Impeccable timing. 

“I’ve also noticed that my front two bottom teeth have started to go crooked,” I said

“Sure.”

“I wear my retainer every night.”

“How old is the retainer?”

“Pretty new, less than a year.”

“And it fits ok?”

“Yes, fits pretty well.”

“How often do you wear it?”

“Every night, both top and bottom teeth.”

“I see. Well, all teeth have a tendency to crowd together over time,” Dr. Hooks shrugged. “Wearing the retainer can help, but that also tends to get deformed after a few years.”

I nodded and sank into a deeper silence this time.

“All set? Okay. See you in six months.” 

Or two years, I thought.

Dr. Hooks left the room. The hygienist cut a foot of floss and started wrapping it between her fingers. She looked like a boxer wrapping her hands before the final round. “How long has it been since you flossed?”

I gulped. “A month or two.”  

Vrrmm. Clack. Splinch.

She managed to saw through two incisors before my gums started bleeding.

“Mayee three or four,” I said. My tongue had no problem lying. Just my gums were inconveniently honest.

The gum racking went on for another two minutes.

“Okay, all set.” The hygienist threw away the scarlet-splattered floss and unclipped my bib. The rusty taste of gum blood mingled with the spearmint toothpaste, ruining the only thing that made the forty-five-minute teeth-cleaning worthwhile.

“You can see Tina behind the front desk about scheduling your next appointment,” the hygienist said definitively. She clicked the TV monitors back on.

“—and I usually set the hydrangeas under the edge of the roof here, you see, because they grow best in the shade.” A lady in some kind of gardening home improvement show said from the screen, beaming. Her teeth were dazzling white and perfectly straight.

I got up, crinkling the seat paper, and walked out the door.

“Looks like March for your next appointment,” Tina said from behind the counter, setting down a glittery pink coffee mug beside her keyboard. “But we’re all booked up that month. Would April work?”

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m leaving the country in late September.”

“I see. Where are you going?” 

“The UK.”

“Wow, how cool! Though not great for dental care.” Tina smiled and handed me a goody bag with a soft-bristled toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of fluoride toothpaste. For your penance…

“Better keep up good home care!” Tina chirped, waving me out the door. Her teeth were pale yellow. She took another sip from the sparkly mug.

I walked out of the office at 8:50 a.m., feeling 50 years older than when I walked in. What color would my teeth be and how far would my front bottom gums have recessed after two more years of coffee drinking, teeth brushing, floss forgetting, and otherwise immaculate dental home care?

Saint Apollonia by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1636

I paced toward the car. If my tongue couldn’t keep honest about the way of things, at least my teeth would. Those little coffee-stained stoics would accept the consequences of my habits. Blind and dumb as they were, they saw through the phony advertising that promised all decay had a technical solution. I was walking around with a mouthful of memento mori. 

I fired the engine and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I left my half-empty coffee mug untouched in the cup holder. When I got home, I’d greet my mother with the kiss of death. Death and dentistry… No wonder St. Apollonia was the patron saint of dentists. She was killed by the Romans after they knocked out all her teeth.

I drove out of the parking lot, now sunk to the bottom of my silence. How strange that I couldn’t speak unless I first walked my thoughts through that plaque-plagued graveyard full of eight-millimeter fluoride-washed tombs!

I stopped at a light. Maybe that made speech an act of supernatural defiance—the struggle of something spiritual to escape a collapsing material cave. Every spoken word was a pilgrim, in some sense, passing through the valley of the shadow of death. If it struck the air, it had passed to the other side. Was that simply resistance, a shout into the void? Or was it a sign that language animals were made for resurrection? That each word was an echo of life beyond the grave?

The light turned green. I smiled and took a sip of coffee. I had at least two more years to think about it.

Lauren Spohn is a Rhodes Scholar pursuing a PhD in Theology at the University of Oxford. A filmmaker and private pilot, she writes about philosophy, culture, and technology for a variety of outlets.