Grin and Bear It

When Senator Norm Coleman takes office in Washington next month, he’ll have some big decisions to make, on everything from war to social security. He may also need to decide on a new dentist, a process that certainly can tax a man’s courage. Norm has already proven himself on that score: In 1999, he underwent a procedure to close the gap in his front teeth. “What’s pain? I’m the mayor,” he said at the time. “I deal with pain all the time.”

Deep down, everyone else is afraid of dentists. The dentistry section in the yellow pages is full of big, bold pleas like, “No Scolding Judgements or Lectures” and “We Cater To Cowards”—selling points that would be bizarre for any other business. Plumbers do not need to run ads that say, “The Plunger Doesn’t Hurt, I Swear to God!”

This is bad. First, it’s bad medicine. Terrified people don’t go to the dentist, or go so rarely that their teeth suffer between visits. Second, it’s a bummer for the dentists. And it’s also bad business. Since insurance companies and government programs pick up less of the tab for your dental work than for other medical procedures, it cuts more deeply into dentists’ bottom line if you can’t bear to have them cut deeply into your molars.

Naturally there’s been considerable effort to change public opinion. “I think in the past, dentists were rougher,” said Jeff Johnson, a dentist in Little Falls. “Dentistry’s kind of a rough thing to start with—banging away and drilling away on your teeth. But if you aren’t conscious of a person’s sensitivity to that, you may not see them again.”

The trend is cheery coziness, the style is basement rec-room. Dentists’ lobbies these days are “more living-room-like and much more comfortable,” says Kimberly Harms, a Farmington dentist. She cheerfully admits that she herself is “absolutely terrified” of having her own teeth worked on, and says her own tendency toward phobia has influenced her practice’s high priority on patient amenities, including a juice bar and a private garden with birds and flowers. “We’re basically looking at the patient at every part of the dental visit and saying, ‘What can we do to make that more relaxing?’”

A lot of patients are agreeable to visual distractions, especially during long sessions. Dr. Harms and Dr. Johnson both offer “video glasses,” sort of eye-phones that attach to a DVD player or a VCR and bedazzle patients with their favorite movies. (Just a suggestion: Don’t request Marathon Man.)

But if dentists want to make sure you know they feel sympathetic, they also want to make sure you feel numb. “I think certainly the public has a lower tolerance for discomfort in recent times,” said St. Anthony dentist Joseph Osterbauer. “What society might have considered a necessary evil, they won’t tolerate anymore.” Nitrous oxide has become common, and many offices now use computer-aided anesthetic injections to reduce pain. Once confined to major oral surgery, powerful knockout drugs like Rohypnol and Halcion are increasingly used for routine dental work. “Sedation dentistry,” as it’s known, is rather drastic. But if there’s no other way you can face the drill, the ADA’s official position is that they’d rather see you unconscious than not see you at all.