Thanks to a recent Groupon, I had a den­tal exam for the first time in years today. I know, the life of the young and unin­sured is glam­orous and adventure-​packed indeed. I’m liv­ing on the edge!

I went to the Ocean View Den­tal loca­tion. I didn’t know this, but appar­ently, this is this Russ­ian part of town. There was a cool Russ­ian mini-​mart nearby with lots of cakes from a local Russ­ian bak­ery and a bunch of imported vodka that I didn’t rec­og­nize the labels of. Also, all of the staff and most of the other patients spoke to each other in some­thing other than English.

Any­way, paper­work didn’t take too long and I went in to the seat. They really have them packed in at this place, but I assume all offices in SF are like this. The hygien­ist came in, intro­duced her­self, and got to work. I got a good scrap­ing with the power pick. She was a bit heavy-​handed at times, but I assume it’s because of my years of build-​up. Then she switched to the hand pick and did some more work along my gum­line. At this point, she told me some­one would be there in a bit to floss, pol­ish, and X-​ray me. She stepped away briefly, then came back and did the floss and pol­ish her­self. Then she told me it would be a while and switched the mon­i­tor by my sta­tion to TV mode and gave me a cable remote. I appre­ci­ate the ges­ture, but was a bit alarmed by the impli­ca­tion that it would take that long.

After about 10 min­utes of TV, a sec­ond per­son came in and set up for x-​rays. I became even more con­cerned when I saw that she put a plas­tic sleeve over the x-​ray dig­i­tal film thing, but not on the clamp that holds the film in posi­tion. There were also pre-​existing teeth-​marks on the clamp, so it obvi­ously isn’t a dis­pos­able one. And when she was done tak­ing pic­tures, she just rolled the USB cable up around the film (still in the dis­pos­able sleeve) and the still-​attached clamp and just tossed the bun­dle back into the x-​ray cab­i­net. I hope they boil that stuff between uses, or else who­ever gets x-​rayed after me might pick up the cough I’ve had the last cou­ple of days, and who knows what I could have picked up!

After another wait, which was shorter than the one between clean­ing and x-​ray ladies, the den­tist finally saw me. She took a look at the notes the hygien­ist wrote in my chart and at the x-​rays, which were still on screen. She asked me if I was hav­ing any trou­ble, and I told her that I was mostly just there for a check-​up, but that my last two wis­dom teeth were com­ing in and were on the cusp of break­ing through the gum­line. She said yes, I should go set an appoint­ment with the office’s oral sur­geon for an extraction.

And that was it! I had maybe two min­utes of face time with the den­tist. Over­all, I guess I can’t com­plain for a $35 appoint­ment, but I don’t think I would go back to this place. I really miss Dr. Ian Wong in Elk Grove. Best den­tist ever!