Column Chronicles
 
Nothing by the tooth
 
 
Frank Cotolo
July 9, 2015
 
Luckily for me, organizations continually call upon me to give inspiring speeches. For some reason people are inspired by what I tell them and they excel in their fields of study after my speeches.
 
Recently, the Dentistry Association of America (DAA) hired me to talk to many of its new members concerning treatment of patients. Here is the text of that speech:
 
Hello and welcome to the DAA's special program on psychological treatment of patients. You all know me, or you should, because I am a verbal communicator who many times broadcasts without the use of his upper teeth. Of course, without the help of a dental surgeon I would still have upper teeth but without the expertise of a great dentist I would not have known that I could be much healthier if all of my upper teeth were extracted.
 
It's important to understand that even when it is beneficial for people not to have teeth, it is a dentist that suggests the teeth be removed. That should show people how devoted all of you are to the health of patients because it is the presence of teeth in people that allow you to make a living - and a good living at that. But when it comes down to the health of a patient or a new Audi for the dentist, the dentist chooses the patient.
 
More facts like that should be told to people so that people will stop being frightened of dentists. Actually, people are scared of the pain they feel dentists will bring them. That's because in the history of dentistry, dentists brought pain to many people while filling cavities and extracting teeth. Although through the years dentists have employed wonderful means of taking pain away from the work they do in people's mouths, people still writhe at dental tools going into their mouths.
 
There are few to no other professionals pay to put their fingers in their mouths. You would never pay a plumber to do it. Nor would you pay certain other doctors to do it. Certainly you would not allow your urologist to do it.
 
So even the modern dentist faces difficulty trying to make patients comfortable, so those of you just setting up your practice should probably order all the laughing gas you can get so that if you hear noises from patients as you crown their teeth or do root canals or braces, you will hear laughing.
 
Those of you that have not taken the course on numbing and knocking out, as the students call it, should know that laughing gas is formally called Nitrous Oxide, and it is a safe sedative agent that you mix with oxygen. The patient never falls to sleep, he or she just relaxes and gets giddy. Make a note that if your patient falls to sleep from Nitrous Oxide, he or she may have died.
 
I heard some moaning in the audience. Don't worry; death on the dental chair is very rare. Most of the time death through dental work happens hours after the patient has left the chair. But all in all, things are well in the dental world and the new technologies will only help new dentists get to the root of the problems that have given this profession a bad name. Just remember, that bad name is nowhere near as bad as pedophile. Thank you and good night.
 
Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.
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