A patient of mine asked me some time back, "You give injections to so many people, and that too in a very sensitive area- the mouth. How do you do it? Does it not make you unhappy?"
Many times I have felt like a parent, whose children ask them those 'strange' questions for which, we search for answers ourselves. As a dentist, I am sure I have been the 'ghost' when many children refuse to eat spinach or beans, and parents say, "you had better eat or I will call your dentist"! I have seen adults crouching away in fear, and more often in anticipation of that fear, and this has happened more often than with the kids. Usually after the novacaine, when the total numbness takes over, there is some sort of a rapport that sets in. And after the treatment, the rapport becomes a bond.
When people ask me why I chose dentistry, I would never have been able to answer that question a few years ago. But that bond, sometimes a frank hug and sometimes a silent handshake, and the satisfaction of getting rid of some pain in a human's life, makes me sleep better. I am grateful Dentistry chose me. |
