Chapter 3
Meet Mrs Christine Craig, 67 years old. She has been a patient of Dr Bentley for a number of years. She finds that lately the dental practice has gone downhill. She finds Dr Bentley, even though friendly as ever, somehow disconnected and distracted. She senses that she is not the patient at the centre of his care like she used to be. She also senses that standards in the practice have slipped Christine is getting frustrated and decides to make a complaint. Her motivation lies in trying to receive the care that she considers herself worthy of.
My earliest memories of visiting the dentist involved being dragged kicking and screaming to see ‘The Butcher’. I was 6 or 7 years old and my older brother had delighted in telling me about the thrills and spills of Dan ‘The Butcher’ dentist. The story was a driller killer thriller and prepared me for my first visit in equal amounts of dread and sheer terror. After such an auspicious start at being a career patient, my dental visits were always destined to be shrouded by the prestorm static behind a child's eyes. Gradually, it became apparent that overcoming the conditioned response required a Herculean effort of applying adult logic to outweigh the childlike fear. The scent of Dentistry wafting through the clinic’s front door would always greet me by invoking the prickly cactus of anticipation anxiety.
I had tried various dentists over the years but none seemed to understand me like Dr Bentley, or ‘Derek’ as I had been invited to call him. One Christmas, my aged mother had attempted some home dentistry, adjusting or rather disfiguring her denture using the flame of a gas cooker. The resulting molten glob was far from expert, unfit for purpose and resulted in the necessity to visit a dentist.
Despite my dental misgivings, as it was my mother that was going to be the sole focus of the Dentist’s attention, I was quite calm. There was no creeping fear, no trembling knees and no anticipation anxiety, nothing, just the urge to help her access appropriate care.
The Dentist, Dr Bentley, treated her with care and attention, restoring her masticatory function, preferring to acknowledge her valiant efforts at home dentistry whilst not belittling her. She was smitten and became a devoted patient of his. She would tell anyone that would listen what a great dentist he was. She didn't judge him by the standard of the dentistry, which seemed of a high standard. She thought he was the best because of the genuine empathy he expressed whilst nodding appreciatively at her ‘slightly longer than comfortable’ stories. His manner was polite and attentive. She became his personal walking advert.
After one such visit, I recall walking through a large department store. My mother noticed some dust covering a mirror. She exclaimed in glee that you wouldn’t expect to see that in Dr Bentley's surgery. She proceeded to report on her visit to the department store bathroom. The toilet brush, she exclaimed, had seen better days, Dr Bentley’s clinic would never have an old toilet brush. I registered some odd glances from passersby at her slightly too loud public stories and smiled at my mildly awkward mirth. Half amused and half embarrassed. I didn't think of her comments until years later after she passed away.
I had invited Dr Bentley to my Mother’s cremation ceremony, a celebration of her life. He was her guest of honour. He ambled, hesitantly to his seat in the front row of the crematorium, the seat of professional privilege. He was the esteemed Dentist held in such high regard by her whilst she was alive. Most of the guests knew of him and revered him with the respect that she had assigned to him. Some of the guests were unaware of his pedigree. I mentioned him in her eulogy, pointing out that Dr Bentley was her treasured Dentist, I couched his name with affection and respect.
I asked him if he would like to say a few words. That’s what she would have wanted. He spoke with love and humility. He chose his words with clinical expertise, playing my friends, colleagues and relatives like a game of chess. Invoking some tears but not too many, before a sombre lingering finale to his humorous musings. He had the good taste to omit the irony of her cremation relative to the cause of their first meeting. Laughter through tears, just the tonic. After all, He was not just any old Dentist, He was the revered Derek Bentley, my Dentist.
His clinic was not the embellished smoked glass and aluminium atrium of flashy adverts I had seen for some other clinics. I had visited a few when choosing my Dentist. I had found that expectations had been unrealistically raised, promising painless dentistry, the city’s best dentists etc. It was inevitable that my unmet expectations created a profound disappointment that resulted in my terminal disillusionment with each successive service.
Dr Bentley led a team at a standard high street practice. It had a simple short slogan on the window. ‘We care.’ I remember it being immaculately maintained. My mother had been correct, you wouldn’t expect to have a badly maintained bathroom or a creaky hinge on the door. I would always assume that if Dr Bentley’s clinic was well maintained, he would also provide well maintained care for my mouth and teeth. The well maintained premises and the friendly approachable team had become my defacto marker for quality of clinical care.
I enjoyed carrying with me my mother’s analytical comparisons when I visited hotels, which I regularly did when travelling for business purposes. When I entered the lobby I would check if the receptionist kept me waiting. Would she gesture immediately that she would attend to me in a moment when she had concluded the task in hand? When I entered my hotel room I would check the consistency of the shampoo. The more viscous, the higher the quality of the hotel. I would close the bathroom door and check for dust in the corner, behind the closed door. This would be the easiest spot to neglect by a clumsy cleaner. It would of course, not be the cleaner’s fault, the responsibility would lie with the cleaning supervisor whose job it would be to motivate their team and to ensure excellent standards were maintained.
As I prepared to exit my car, I felt my heart rate increase. My Dental anxiety had started. I pictured myself after the appointment had ended, all smiles, waves and fond goodbyes. I tried to use visualisation of a good outcome to spur me to enter the clinic. As I sidled hesitantly towards the front door of the clinic, I breathed deeply and expended immense emotional energy on keeping myself calm. ‘It was only a story,’ I heard my mothers reassuring voice echo in my subconscious. I swallowed my growing panic and washed it down with a draught of adult’s logic. It was a jagged pill to swallow but my will took me to face the clinic door.
As I entered, I approached the reception desk. There were two receptionists engaged with other tasks. I stood patiently waiting without acknowledgement. I shifted on the balls of my feet, making myself taller in a bid to gain attention. After a significant pregnant pause, I was greeted by a lukewarm instruction to please have a seat as Dr Bentley would see me shortly.
I noticed the faded clock on the waiting room wall. I was a calculated 2 minutes early.
My gaze drifted from the clock to a water stained ceiling tile. It dawned on me that the last time I was here, I had commented on it and been told that it was the result of a leaking pipe from the winter’s thaw. It was not quite deja vu but I knew I had seen it before, an unrequited blot on the maintenance to-do list.
I sat there and mused to myself about how times had changed. I wondered how Dr Bentley’s dental nurse, Jolene, was. She would always greet me so naturally, welcoming me into her dental world like a companion or a guide. She was my ally in the white coated, dental world, as long as she was there I would be able to survive my visit.
I looked back down to the clock and noticed my musings had willed the hands to show seven minutes past my allotted appointment time. I wondered why, if I had been at a hospital appointment I would expect to be seen an hour late. If I had been at the GP surgery I perhaps would have tolerated 20 minutes of tardiness. Here I expected to be seen on time, to the minute.
In an effort to console myself, I inwardly shrugged. At least it gave me a chance to collect my thoughts and rehearse all elements of the story that I wanted to tell Dr Bentley in as efficient a way as possible. I had three things to mention and wanted to make sure that I didn't miss anything out.
My shoulders dropped with relief as I finally saw the familiar face of Jolene, her caring almond eyes championed her smart, medicalised appearance. She had a friendly face and even before she spoke I could always tell that she had a playful expression perched comfortably on her concealed lips.
‘Come on Chris, let’s go through now and see Dr Bentley.’
Even though I expected to be addressed as Mrs Craig by the rest of the staff, I welcomed the familiarity of first name terms from Jolene. She ushered me through the bustling corridor of closed doors. I was curious about what horrors would lie behind each successive surgery. I resisted the temptation to attempt a sneaky peek for fear of the blinding discovery that my brother had in fact, been right about the driller killer thriller. After all, hindsight killed the cat.
I approached the dreaded chair and instantly forgot how to sit in a relatively familiar piece of furniture.I was glad when Derek made his appearance felt before he entered the room. His friendly tones exuded warmth and welcome as he appeared from behind the closed door.
It always feels odd that a year goes by between meetings but somehow we have always picked up where we left off. Derek sat down facing me, adjusting the height of his chair so our eyes were level and greeted me with his characteristic friendliness. He asked me how I was and I proceeded to tell him my dental woes.
He delayed his questioning until after I had concluded my story. I felt my shoulders drop. I was relieved just to get to the end. Other dentists had interrupted me with pointed questions, ears visibly pricking up, hunters eagerly homing in on a diagnosis with time efficient attention, ready to pounce and deal out effective treatment options at the drop of a fashionable hat.
When Derek lay the chair back, my gaze found unfortunate familiarity in the three dead flies that resided in the light fitting directly above. They appeared to be frozen in conversation, discussing the latest techniques on ceiling furniture entrapment avoidance. I realised that I had observed the same static moment of their discussion during my last appointment. It hadn’t bothered me on the first occasion but now, i wondered why no one had noticed. Does anybody out there even care?
Interrupting my reverie, there was a soft, polite knock on the door, one of the nurses requested an item from Jolene in a whispered background manner. Dr Bentley continued with his examination and the exchange disappeared in the continuity of my visit. I felt mild annoyance that there was an interaction that had excluded me. Was i not supposed to be the focus for the team?
My treatment was carried out with due care and attention and I sat up feeling great relief that I had survived another visit.
I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to ask about the tooth on the other side of my mouth, the side that wasn't numb. I brought it up with Derek, I sensed Jolene roll her almond eyes in their irregularly shaped sockets behind me. Derek explained that he had a waiting room full of patients to see, why hadn't I mentioned the additional issue at the beginning of the appointment? I would have to make another appointment to investigate the tooth, gotta keep moving…
I left the surgery crestfallen, I went to the toilet. Not because of any urgency to use the facilities for their assigned purpose but instead just to hold a moment of private solitude. I sat on the closed lid, catching my breath, collecting my thoughts and gathering up the will to leave the premises. I glanced across the small room and noticed a dust ball in the corner of the floor behind the door and realised that although my care had been delivered with expertise, it must have also been carried out with an underlying lack of attention to detail. I maintained my composure through the crowded waiting area, briefly pausing to settle my account and hurriedly exited the building.
This story comes from the collective experiences of over two decades of being a dentist, talking with dentists and their teams. It’s important to be able to talk about the difficulties we might experience and how to overcome them. Morale in dentistry is at an all time low and I hope that this 4 chapter story will help people explore their daily professional experience of themselves, their angle of daily discomfort.
Comentarios