When I lived in Nashville those eight years, while I pursued my doctorate at Vanderbilt, when you were told by a doctor or dentist that you needed some procedure, medicine or treatment, you knew you had some medical necessity requiring action. And so it was that when upon completing my coursework our family moved back to the west coast—specifically to Los Angeles--we were in a state of deep trust that the same would hold true here. Sadly, that has not been the case. For instance, when I went to a new dentist for the first time, he put a 20x magnifying lens to one of my front teeth to show me some wear and tear on the bottom edge that I had never noticed before and that he felt compelled to fix. Reflected back by the enlarging lens, the tooth’s edge looked like the Grand Canyon and I immediately agreed. On went some cosmetic dentistry miracle that required a bit of filing away of what until that moment I had thought of as perfectly normal tooth. It cost some bucks and looked dazzling and if that was the end of the story, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.
But the darn resin-based contraption didn’t stick. Of course, the “dentist to the stars” said it was my fault for trying to eat normally. The first time I came in to have it re-restored, it had been a stray almond in a granola bar. The second time, it had been a rib bone. The third time, however, having learned my lesson to avoid anything solid, it was a tomato, I believe. As the list of foods I could eat was rapidly diminishing, I began to feel suddenly dietetically as well as cosmetically disabled. Happily, a friend who heard the story asked me where the dentist was located. When I answered “Beverly Hills”, she suggested that I seek out a second opinion at least thirty miles away from ground zero for dental make-overs.
My new dentist is in the unglamorous part of the valley. He fixed the problem so that not only is my tooth stable and serene, but I eat whatever I gosh darn please. Moreover, he told me what I had intuited from the first. At my age, a little wear and tear on one’s teeth is perfectly normal. The fact that a dentist can restore it to the look and feel of a pristine 16-year-old’s front tooth doesn’t mean that one should feel compelled to make the effort. As long as you don’t take a 20x magnifying lens to my teeth, you could say that I’ve got a fine set of teeth for a woman my age—and one tooth, in particular, that has had to fight its way back to normal.
Carol Orsborn