If you're ever in Mandurah and you have a toothache, please let me introduce a great dental practice. Seriously, I blogged recently about how one well known practice couldn't give me any straight answers, asked me to jump through a series of hoops and basically called me a fuckwit when I asked why I was authorising CenterLink to supply details on me electronically and yet the practice wanted me to go to CenterLink and bring them a Letter which would say the same thing. Oh and when I asked for a ballpark figure, they procrastinated and prevaricated and couldn't actually tell me anything.
I walked into Platinum Smile Dental Practice and asked the same questions, got given the same release for CenterLink form, and they were taken back with no further questions, and my appointment was booked. When I asked what it would cost me, the receptionist gave me the standard gap I'd have to pay on my pension, and the average I might have to go to if it was something other than a plain vanilla extraction.
I rang DB back and told the receptionist I'd spoken to that I wanted to cancel the appointment there. She asked why and I told her it was because she'd been very stupid and evasive. She started to try and talk me into keeping the appointment and at one stage I ventured that she was still being stupid. She kept going for another three minutes, and finally I cut her off and asked her to cancel the appointment already. "Oh - and you've just proven how stupid you are" I finished with, "you could have saved ten minutes of your time and effort by doing what me, the customer, asked you, the employee, to do - way back at the beginning there..."
Days before my appointment, Platinum Smile phoned me and advised me they'd had a cancellation and was I interested, which of course I was, so next day I was sitting in that scary chair, Dr Eugene Khoo looked in my mouth and said he could pull the tooth right now, complete with abscess and unpredictable results, or I could take a course of antibiotics and rebook. I think that was a very polite and considerate thing to do, it gave me the option of "right now!" if I couldn't stand it or a gentler procedure in a week. I'm a wussie, I chose the latter.
So Wednesday I arrived for my appointment, every other dentist I've ever had doing an extraction has taken between five and ten minutes of hard work on my tooth and jaw, I've lost count of how many of the handful of extractions I've had have actually splintered the jawbone. I sat down, Dr Khoo took a look at the tooth and then said something about time for the local, at which I quailed again, because my first experience with local was when I was nine and had to go to the dentist alone (parents on the farm , I had to take time off school to do this) wasn't great either.
The nurse held my head steady standing to my left and behind me, the good doctor injected anesthetic, and the nurse squeaked and stepped back. Doddering old fart had pushed the needle right out through my cheek and sprayed his load all over her pinafore... That's set the scene for most of my dental encounters, in fact. Incompetence arrogance and a kind of stupidity that I'm sure had to have been a Uni course....
Back to the present: Dr Khoo started the injections and I started to cringe - but... hang on! Where was the heaps and heaps of sharp pains, the needle scraping along the jawbone? In fact, only one or two of the dozen or so sites experienced discomfort, and not much at that. While he explained the post op stuff I'd have to do, bits of my face started vanishing off the tactile radar. He got up, pricked a few spots and I felt - nothing.
Then he picked up an Evil Gizmo and clamped it on the tooth, and reefed it around a few times, only once I felt a dull thing and wanted to raise my left hand but it stopped before it got anywhere near the Pain scale. Then my mild mannered dentist picked up a huge gizmo and clamped it onto the tooth, gave it a wiggle to see how hard it would be to pull. I braced myself, this was going to hurt! and heard the sound of my tooth being dropped in the tray...
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have met a true Dental Ninja! Even if you're in Perth, I reckon it would be worth driving down here to see Dr Khoo!
Oh and post-op? Anesthetic wore off hours later, and I took a panadol and an ibuprofen just to be sure, but it's really only throbbing mildly, because he worked so quickly (I estimate under 90 seconds all up) that there wasn't a long drawn out trauma to the jawbone. I think by tomorrow I'll be pain free altogether, and give me three days I'll be eating steaks again...
Platinum Smile Dental Centre
U3/55 Murdoch dve
Greenfields
(08) 9534 7946
Yes that's definitely a recommendation!
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