Friday, January 06, 2006
A Visit to the Dentist
There’s nothing like an hour and a half in the dentist’s chair to get you thinking about metaphysics. Something about the combination of easy listening over the sound system and local anesthetic naturally provokes questions about what part of us survives through change and decay, and about whether time can be subdivided to infinity.
After delicately working over my aching jaw millimeter by millimeter, the dentist delivers his verdict. Alas, mending and making do will hold my lower left molar together no longer. I feel a stabbing anticipatory pain in my pocket book but concur: it’s time for that crown.
My dentist is a Sharper Image kind of a guy and lately he’s been talking up his newest gadget, which allows him to make and insert a crown in one session. Instead of gagging on a scold’s bridle full of plastic resin to cast an impression, I’ll be scanned with a device that bounces light rays over my tooth to record its shape. Fancy software converts those measurements into instructions to a machine which carves a porcelain crown while the patient waits. “We don’t have to send the cast away to be made in a lab anymore,” my dentist rejoices.
In front of my chair, there’s a terminal where a 3_d image of my crown rotates slowly on the screen. The software lets my dentist examine this virtual model of y crown-to-be and correct its features on screen before making it for real. The image of my tooth floats like an iceberg in cyberspace: unmoored from space, time and my jawbone, it is invulnerable to decay.
After a keyboard command, each elevation of the tooth shows up on screen shaded like a contour map: where the crown is too thin, the screen is red, grading through yellow and green where the depth is just right. Like a video-game player, my dentist moves a computer mouse to shift an icon and re-shape the virtual tooth. My cyborg tooth will fit better than the original it replaces. “And,” my dentist exults, “we’ll archive this design electronically. Then, if you ever break the crown, you can just come in and we can re-make it on the spot.”
I muse on this prospect of my infinitely replicable, perfected teeth. As each version crumbles, it can be replaced by a shiny new model, maybe trade in in advance, before it loses its shine. Why not measure and record each of my teeth now, and, at the first signs of decay, carve me out a new copy? Or a better one? Then: Why stop at my teeth? Why not take a blueprint of the contours of each bone in my face, my body?
As my thoughts turn to hip replacements and nose-jobs, the dentist interrupts: “Do you want to see the crown being carved?” The lathe looks a lot like my bread-machine at home, except for a clear viewing window at the front, through which I see two tiny drill heads mounted on articulated arms confronting a porcelain blank.
The miniature lathes dance delicately through a continuous, cooling water-spray, and chisel away at the porcelain. Twinned diamond drills respond to each other’s movements as elegantly as Fred and Ginger waltz through a fountain. In twelve minutes, the crown is severed from its porcelain sprue and clinks into the catching tray beneath. It is a perfectly uniform shade of ivory, as innocent as a drop of milk. It looks like a cup from the Tooth Fairy’s tea-set.
A dab of cement and my dentist proffers a hand-mirror to view my eerily perfect new tooth. In the mirror, I face the New Year with my first, cyborg smile.
A random selection from more than 300 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Louise Collins -- A Visit to the Dentist / More essays by Louise
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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Recent pieces
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