Dentistry-for Better or Worse
By Charles Reap
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About this ebook
Some personal thoughts and advice for lay people about dentistry, your teeth, your gums and your overall health. Or, things you always wanted to know about dentistry and all the above, but were afraid to ask.
Charles Reap
Charles A. Reap, Jr., DDS, was born in Albemarle, North Carolina, 1931. Attended Duke University, 1948-51. US Air Force (dental assistant, hygienist, laboratory technician), 1951-53. University of North Carolina School of Dentistry, 1954-1958. Dental faculty, 1958-59. Private practice, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1959-1998. He is a former newspaper reporter and columnist, a dentist and a lecturer. He has authored two dental textbooks and two published novels (Amazon.com). His illustrated children's book Destiny has just been released by Gypsy Shadow Publishing. Also among his accomplishments, Reap is a Nesta award winner and has received Preditors and Editors Readers Poll recognition. Stage and film actor. Writer: screenplays/stage plays. Music composer. Hobbyist boat builder.
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Book preview
Dentistry-for Better or Worse - Charles Reap
Contents
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
About the Author
Dentistry—For Better or Worse
by
Charles Reap
All rights reserved
Copyright © January 24, 2015, Charles A. Reap, Jr., DDS
Cover Art Copyright © 2015, Charlotte Holley
Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.
Lockhart, TX
www.gypsyshadow.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.
ISBN: 978-1-61950-408-0
Published in the United States of America
First eBook Edition: May 1, 2015
Chapter 1
"Fordy years ago I cudn’t even spell
denus, and now I are one."
That funny statement has always stuck with me. Actually, I could spell dentist by the third grade. I had to go to one often enough. And how I dreaded and hated it. For some unknown reason, my working parents could never go with me; I was simply told to show up at Dr. Blank’s office at a certain time. And, like an obedient numbskull, I did.
As a matter of fact, my very first visit to a dentist was with a first grade friend of mine, Bobby. It was scary. He, whose parents were also at work, and I had to walk downtown (six whole blocks!) from elementary school and then up a long steep narrow stairway, down a darkened hallway, and into his foreboding office. Anyway, this particular dentist checked Bobby’s teeth and mine, and then we left. That’s all that happened, and I never saw him again.
I began seeing Dr. So-and-So a few years later, when he and his new wife moved to town and rented an apartment from my father.
Dr. So-and-So’s office was also a second floor, but a much brighter one. At least, in the afternoons the sun would shine brightly in his windows and reflect off of my tears of fright. Lordy, I hated that man! He would drill on my not-numbed-up teeth and all he would do was to tell me to hold on tightly to the arms of the dental chair. Ooh, what suffering!
Dentists in those days only had the old-fashioned slow, belt-driven drills. They’d run perhaps thirty-five hundred revolutions per minute, tops. You could feel every revolution of the drill bit (The bit is called a bur).
Nowadays, the various air-turbine high speed drills will power along at speeds nearly a million RPMs. There’s no longer any of that vibration. A study was done finding that above roughly sixty-five thousand RPMs, one no longer felt much vibration on the drilled tooth. But with the increased speed you’ve added heat, which, if excessive, can easily damage or even kill the nerve of the tooth, so cooling water needs to be sprayed onto the tip of the bur.
Anyway, Dr. So-and-So’d have me rinse my mouth and I’d intentionally take a r-e-a-l long time doing that, because I knew as long as I was doing that, he couldn’t drill. It wasn’t much, but at least it was a small relief from his heavy hand.
I didn’t have very good teeth back when I was a youngster. In fact, it’s a wonder I have all my teeth now, because I rarely brushed them in those days. It sure did make my big sister mad, though, when I’d take my fingernail and scrape off a big thick bunch of goop (plaque: accumulated soft clumps of bacteria) from my front teeth and show the white mass to her. I thought it was pretty