Ugly legacy of the Soviet dentistry (or stomatology as it was called there) can still be found in the millions of toothless and disfigured mouths of its victims. A visit to a dentist was one of the scariest and painful events a person had to endure in their life. Kids as well as grown-ups tried their best to avoid these dreadful visits, sometimes tolerating toothache for days and even months at a time. Avoiding the dentist during the school years was hard because annual group dental visits were mandatory. Skipping a visit would get a person suspended from school, which actually happened to yours truly, and the only way to get back to school would be to bring a note from a dentist. Soviet kids had to have healthy teeth no matter what.
As with all medicine in the USSR, dental care was universally available for free to the people and, as I mentioned above, sometimes even insisted upon by the Soviet Government. So why did the Soviet people avoided it like a plague? One word answer is anesthesia, or more precisely, the lack thereof. For reasons that are still mysterious to me, Soviet dentists did not use any painkillers on their trembling and screaming in pain patients, kids or adults. One of my earliest childhood memories is a tooth being extracted from my mouth live, without even a numbing ointment that dentists use here to make shots less painful. This event alone explains my life-long torturous relationship with dentistry. Many fillings and even a root canal procedure were done on me since then, when I felt every spin of the drill, every touch, and every time they sprayed some cooling solution on an overheated from drilling tooth. Still the first tooth ripped out of my mouth when I was 5 or 6 years old hurt the most. No one since then clearly explained why it was done this way. Maybe they wanted to build our characters, prepare us for torture, raise our pain tolerance so in case we ever ended up in Guantanamo Bay we would think that waterboarding was just a splash in a tub. Soviet medicine was actually very progressive and inventive and many procedures used in the modern medicine were conceived and first tested in Russia and the USSR. There is no questions that dentists in 70’s were fully aware of how it was done in the West. Even inside the USSR some dentists who were quietly operating outside of the system for cash, used anesthesia on their lucky patients. The rest of us had to go through unbearable pain and suffering. For my first several years in the USA even with dental insurance available I still stayed away from dentists, swallowing bottles of Tylenol to dull the pain. My first visit to the dentist here was almost a religious experience and now all I am afraid of is the extraction of large sums of money from my wallet.
The dentist’s office of my childhood was designed for inflicting not only physical but also mental pain on the patient. Multiple chairs were situated in the same room so everyone could enjoy everyone else’s screams and see their unfortunate neighbors in the different stages of confessing their innermost secrets. The chair did not recline so the patient was almost always sitting straight up while the dentist was operating in front or to the side of the chair. Unlike American setup, all the scary tools of the trade were laid out in front of the patient so he could clearly see the size of the pliers that would shortly end up in his mouth. I don’t recall them ever using x-rays so they operated purely on a hunch. One of the girls from my class had a wrong (healthy) tooth extracted while the unhealthy tooth stayed intact. Things happened. On one of my mandatory school visits my class was sitting in the waiting room downstairs, when I was called up for my turn to be treated. I sat in the chair and the dentist ordered me to open my mouth. Always a rebel, I refused, got up and went back downstairs happy and smiling and went home. Next day I was not allowed to attend school and had to go back and submit, to a (nicer) dentist. There was no escape. Needless to say that after mandatory annual visits were over I successfully avoided the dentist chair for the next four years.
Even more exciting was the root canal procedure. Before I was drafted into the army I heard the rumors that military dentists are even more evil than civilian ones, although it was hard to imagine that this was possible. Conventional wisdom required to get treatment before the draft, on your own terms, which I reluctantly did. I had a couple of fillings done and then the words “root canal” (in Russian of course) were uttered. Root canal was done in two stages: in stage one the tooth was drilled (did I mention no painkillers) and filled with arsenic to “kill the nerve”; in stage two the arsenic was drilled out and the nerve was extracted using a tiny file similar to the ones used here. I can’t speak for everyone but in my case the nerve wasn’t even close to being dead. I felt it being pulled out seemingly all the way from my brain. I spit on waterboarding. CIA needs to go to Brighton Beach, get one of the old Soviet dentists from way back, and after a root canal or two Osama Bin Laden wouldn’t stand a chance. Lastly, I would like to mention the general ugliness of the dental work from that era. Gold, silver and metal crowns were not only common but very popular. You can say that Soviet citizens had gold teeth before it became cool. Some central Asian nationalities liked it so much that they filled their entire mouths with gold, leading to a recent ban on gold teeth in one of the former republics. While I think that United States raised beautiful teeth almost to a cult level, where billions of dollars are spent to straighten and whiten perfectly normal teeth, former Soviet Union was all the way on the opposite end of the mouth spectrum, where neglect and ugly dental work were perfectly normal. The irony of the free dentistry so bad and so painful that no one wanted it is left for us to ponder. So, the next time you see a Caucasian person sporting a golden smile the chances are they are from the Eastern Europe where medieval medical technology survived into the modern times.
When you are relaxing in your dentist’s chair with TV in front of you, a dentist, a nurse and all the technology surrounding you to make your visit pleasant, thank your dental gods for your luck and maybe feel a little better about shelling out your hard-earned money for the services. It’s well worth it.
This post should be titled “I have a camera too, you know…”. There are people in this town who are really good at taking pictures, and then there is me. I don’t set an aperture and exposure on my camera, I just push the button. That doesn’t make me any less eager to share my photos. Plus I have better captions.
Government healthcare is like wiping your ass with a newspaper: it’s not pleasant, but it gets the job done. Contrary to what some people might think I am actually for the healthcare reform, even though I have excellent benefits at work and don’t spend even close to the mythical $2,500 that the President keeps talking about. Since I used to live in the country with free universal government-provided healthcare and my Father was a doctor I do know a little bit about it. I realize that this is not the model being proposed here but if you believe that this government will pamper its citizens any more than absolutely necessary, you first government-paid appointment should be with a psychiatrist. I don’t know if this government will go as extreme as paying for a root canal but not for anesthesia, or for childbirth but not for epidural, but you can certainly look forward to the bureaucrats eliminating unnecessary luxuries and finding money-saving efficiencies. Despite what the President says, this bill is not paid for and there is no money to pay for it, so borrowing more or raising taxes in the near future seems unavoidable.
Still I think that the healthcare should be reformed. My reasons are as always selfish: health benefits at work are the number one reason I stuck around there for nearly 10 years and did not try to do something on my own. All my far-fetched plans involve me keeping my full-time job just so I can afford the doctor visits and medication. In other words, the healthcare concerns control my life and limit my choices, and I would be happy if this was not on the list of things that hold me back, somewhere between laziness, procrastination and pessimism.
Speaking about pessimism, I truly believe that the President and the Congress are set on pushing through the legislation that will create, for the lack of a better word, even bigger clusterfuck than we already have. The main reason is that at some point it stopped being about the reform and became about the legislation itself. Because if it was about the reform, there wouldn’t be a deadline of yesterday, or next Friday, or before or after the recess. The healthcare today is not dramatically worse than it was on January 18th or a year ago and it’s not about to disintegrate tomorrow. Maybe a bill that affects 15-20% of the GDP and everyone in this country should get a little more consideration than a typical daily piece of legislation. The current hysterical approach reminds me a lot of the run-up to the war in Iraq: Iraq was a stable, albeit a shitty country, until its threat level was artificially and deceitfully escalated, raising the perceived urgency and leading to an idiotic decision to invade. How many congress-people would like to take back their vote, how many now are saying they were under the influence didn’t have enough information to make an educated choice. There are plenty of mistakes to learn from, but why do it if the same jackasses who voted for the war in Iraq, or mortgage deregulation or whatever else are still being reelected and bragging about not reading the bill or caring about the “irrelevant” details. Kind of like the old Jewish joke: -Hey Isaac, do you like Pavarotti?
-No he has a whiny voice, lisps and can’t pronounce half the letters.
-But have you ever heard him?
-No but Shmuel sung it for me.
Jokes don’t translate well but the point is: if a congress-person is not capable of reading and comprehending the bill, who then actually wrote it and summarized it for the said person in order for them to make an informed vote? The aid who did it doesn’t have much to lose; their name will not appear on the legislation.
What surprises me in the current state of discussion is not the loud-mouth morons screaming at town-halls or their idiot counterparts boycotting Whole Foods (a company that pays for 100% of their employees’ health coverage and supports their beloved organic farms) because their CEO wrote an article in the paper that they disagree with. I am always surprised by the people who are willing to trust anything coming down from the government just because it sounds progressive. You don’t have to believe in outlandish death panels or 10-year treatment waiting lists, but a little healthy doubt never hurt anyone. The government doesn’t have a great track record of doing things right, the usual examples of successes like the military (who literally loses truckloads of cash), VA, Medicare, Social Security, etc. are not known for being efficient, frugal or particularly user-friendly. Even the President stumbled trying to offer the Post Office as an example of the Government option, noting that it has all the problems unlike UPS and FedEx. Another reason to doubt the sincerity of your legislators’ intentions is their acceptance of political contributions. While people like C.J.Janovy self-induce vomiting going through every line of Senator Roberts’ donor list, even she has to acknowledge that most of the democrats have similar or even bigger lists of healthcare industry contributions including the President with his $19,462,986 take. It’s possible to take the money and then show your donor a finger, but is it likely? By the way, I recently met CJ and she looks nothing like I imagined. Here is a portrait of her editing a fresh copy of the Pitch.
It’s unfortunate that every discussion of important subjects in this country now comes down to catchphrases and labels. Socialism is mostly about the ownership of the means of production as well as income distribution. If the government owned the entire healthcare industry and employed all medical workers, and people like my Father had their paycheck signed by Barack Obama that would’ve been socialism. Otherwise it’s really not. Death panels? Little harsh, but decisions like that are made every day. Even now they will tell you that you may be too old for a new knee, a heart transplant or a cataract surgery and even if you have all the money in the world the doctor might still advise you not to do it. We are all mortals after all, I for one believe that artificially extending pain and suffering is not humane.
Lastly, for a look at what the government healthcare in this country might look like:
Since I’ve thought about the subject a lot, I might have another installment in a day or two with the things that I think need to be included in the legislation.
For the first 22 years of my life I didn’t care about directions. Someone gave me a compass once but I never figured out how to use it. And why would I need to? All my travelling was done with someone else driving, piloting or engineering (or however you refer to driving a train). Now, when I have my own steering wheel to turn, the directions are important and indispensable. If you can find South on the map you can visit the Southeastern part of Kansas – an oasis of greatness bordering by the depressed and hostile Southwestern Missouri and Northeastern Oklahoma.
Just take Hwy 7 towards historic Paola, KS and Osawatomie, KS – home-base of John Brown, famous abolitionist and the leader of the Pottawatomie Massacre (it’s hard to refer to the killing of five people as a “massacre”, but everything has to be over-dramatized in the American history so just roll with it). These two towns are fine destinations on their own, but if you keep moving south you will find no less interesting sightseeing in the Linn County and beyond.
For example, Linn County courthouse in Mound City.
Lastly, I would like to mention the general ugliness of the dental work from that era. Gold, silver and metal crowns were not only common but very popular. You can say that Soviet citizens had gold teeth before it became cool. Some central Asian nationalities liked it so much that they filled their entire mouths with gold, leading to a recent ban on gold teeth in one of the former republics. While I think that United States raised beautiful teeth almost to a cult level, where billions of dollars are spent to straighten and whiten perfectly normal teeth, former Soviet Union was all the way on the opposite end of the mouth spectrum, where neglect and ugly dental work were perfectly normal. The irony of the free dentistry so bad and so painful that no one wanted it is left for us to ponder. So, the next time you see a Caucasian person sporting a golden smile the chances are they are from the Eastern Europe where medieval medical technology survived into the modern times.
Another reason to doubt the sincerity of your legislators’ intentions is their acceptance of political contributions. While people like C.J.Janovy self-induce vomiting going through every line of Senator Roberts’ donor list, even she has to acknowledge that most of the democrats have similar or even bigger lists of healthcare industry contributions including the President with his $19,462,986 take. It’s possible to take the money and then show your donor a finger, but is it likely? By the way, I recently met CJ and she looks nothing like I imagined. Here is a portrait of her editing a fresh copy of the Pitch.
