If You Have A Talent For Causing Pain

This is Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors" singing the dentist song. Check it out here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtMizMQ6oM

Now imagine this in spanish. That is pretty much what I am dealing with on a day to day basis. My dentist here in Argentina is named Dr. Castillo. He may seem like a very nice guy, with a wife and new baby. He greats you at the door with a handshake and a kiss on the cheek Argentinian style. He will ask how you are doing and how your family is. Then it's party time.

His style of dentistry is very different from what I have experienced in Canada. He involves you and consults you a lot ("here, hold this while I drill"). He will talk about your xrays and makes plans on how he is going to approach the problem. I can say that I have learned a lot about dentistry, more than I want to know really. If I had the choice I would prefer to just not be there when the work is being done, thank you very much. I don't care if the implant has embedded into the bone properly, get your hand out of my mouth.

"I have to do some work over here with the drill, do you want the needle or should I keep going until you say stop?" I am faced with this choice daily, numerous times. I have an irrational, pathological hatred of the needle in my mouth so I usually try to tough it out. It is sort of similar to the question "Would you rather get burned by having the heat turned up slowly or just have the branding iron in and out quickly and be done with it?"

He also has that neat dentist trick of finding spots in your mouth that aren't somehow frozen after getting poked a bunch of times. He will explore around until the one little spot of live nerve endings is found and then of course go to work there for as long as possible before I get suspicious.

When the day is over he drives home in the BMW I helped pay for. I go back to our apartment and take whiskey and Advil for pain management. Good times.