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We sent one of our staff to visit Dr.Gary
Braunstein (actually, the gentleman’s mother, aghast at her son’s admission of
neglecting to visit a dentist for almost three years, added her persuasive strength to the
discussion).
We were surprised to see him returning so promptly and happily after
his appointment.
“It was great!” he declared. “It was fast,
painless and they had a lot of toys.”
“Toy’s?” We looked at him in bewilderment.
He elaborated: “Well, really neat video equipment.”
Ahh - - the adult male toy of the ‘90’s. Now we
understood. “No kidding,” he chirped as happily as a 12-year-old
skipping in from a video arcade. “First I sat in this comfy chair in the
waiting room where they have a TV screen. I hardly had a chance to check out the
movies playing before I was ushered into the station with even more electronic
stuff.”
“What kind of stuff and was this really a dentist’s
office?” we queried, beginning to get a bit suspicious. (Perhaps
he’d stumbled into Toys R Us by mistake.)
“Well, they had a monitor where you could either watch a
full-length movie or TV or do this interactive learning activity, where you get to hold
the control and move the cursor to find out about different cosmetic dentistry procedures
- - teeth whitening - - all sorts of fun stuff.”
“Ok, but how about the un-fun stuff? How did the actual
exam go or did you just sneak in, play games and sneak back out?”
“No, but he did something almost as exciting. He took this
pencil-like object - - a high -resolution camera with a tiny video head - - and worked it
around slowly in my mouth, tooth by tooth. Everything he did appeared on the TV
monitor. I could see everything, even the bubbles in my saliva!”
(We thought that sounded a bit gross, but he was so enthusiastic, we
let him continue. Boys will by boys, you know.)
“It was like going on a ride inside my own mouth. Gary
should call himself the Disneyland dentist. And as he shows you every problem, up
close and personal, he explains the different options you can take, the short- and
long-term effectiveness of each alternative and the price, too.”
“In other words,” we said (glad to get a word in edgewise,
and not only a word but what we thought was an extremely witty remark), “he gave you
the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth.”
“Hey,” he said with a hurt look on his face.
Don’t make jokes. Going to the dentist is serious business. It’s not
all fun and games, you know.”
Boy . . . you sure could have fooled us!
Gary
Braunstein DDS Inc
205 South El Camino Real, Encinitas, CA 92024
(760) 436-9691
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