I love going to my dentist. The office is tastefully decorated, furnished with super-comfy chairs and it has a TV screen in each room where I can catch up on morning news. The staff is friendly and Nicole is the best dental hygienist in the world. She is just the right combination of gentleness and toughness – gentle on teeth and gums but hard on plaque. She is extremely conscientious and so sweet she poses a threat to good dental hygiene. By the time she is done with me, my teeth are so clean I don’t want to eat for a week lest I ruin her work. The feeling, unfortunately, goes away after a couple of hours. She never ever comments on the condition of my teeth, leaving the diagnosis to the Big Kahua, which, in my case, is Dr. M. The only thing I hate about her is that each visit she asks me the same question:
Do you floss… daily?
If only she left out that daily at the end, or replaced floss with brush, our relationship would be perfect.
Yesterday was my regular 6 month checkup.
We breeze through the cleaning and the usual one-way conversations since my mouth is temporarily disabled by all the instruments of torture and her two piano-player hands. As she attacks the plaque deposits with a pick and an axe, she complements me on my home care. I only grunt and mumble, her comment leaving me quite perplexed – if I am doing such a great job at home, how come there is still so much crud left in my mouth that she acts like a underground miner?
When she is done, she hands me a soft-bristled yellow brush and another package of floss and tells me the doctor will be in shortly.
He comes in, shakes my hand and turns to the computer screen behind me, his laser attention focused on the not too attractive display of my X-rays. After several minutes of pregnant silence, I can’t bear it any longer:
So, what’s the verdict, doc? I am savoring my freshly cleaned mouth, and Nicole’s earlier compliment on good home care, expecting to pass the test with flying colors.
Still looking… responded Dr. M, with his back turned. He wasn’t being chatty for sure.
Looking where?!!! I am right here! I had hoped to impress him with my shiny smile, but he never gave me a chance.
The silence was now pregnant with twins… or triplets… or octuplets… Finally, he walks over to me and without a single glance inside my mouth, he declares,
It’s not good. That old filling continues to crack and crumble and you are now getting a decay behind it. We must do something about it…
Your home care is good, he adds but that doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore. The staff will help you with the rest. Good bye.
I feel something resembling pieces of gravel inside my mouth. I vaguely remember my last visit and a word about the old filling and cracks and the paper that spelled out the damages in multiple hundreds of dollars terms. I also vaguely remember the fog descending on my mind when I saw the aforementioned terms. Six months later the fog turned into a hammer.
Now fully awake, I realize that my problem is much bigger than a soft-bristled brush can solve. It reaches back into my past when the dentist visits took place only when the pain got to be more than I could bear. The old filling may have patched up my inconsistencies at the time, but its crumbling structure indicated it has outlived its usefulness. Further delays only compound the damage and put me at a risk of losing my tooth. It’s the kind of price I am not willing to pay, either with my teeth or with my life. For there is another Doctor who is more interested in what His x-ray vision detects than in the shiny veneer that can fool everyone else. And when He sees a crumbling foundation, He'll move heaven and earth to dig as deep as He needs until my foot is set firmly on the Rock.
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Hebrews 4:12,13
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