Crossing the river Styx gets one into the bowels of hell. The guardian is Cerberus the multi-headed dog. As I went to my quarterly dental hygienist visit I was reminded of Dante's Inferno. Led by Virgil, Dante manages to see the sufferings of those in the various levels of Hell. What Dante left out, at the truly lowest level of Hell is the Dental Hygienist.
These torturers of humans take forks and picks and dig into your flesh while telling you what a poor job of flossing you have done. Failure to floss is the greatest of mortal sins that humans commit, and as the Hygienist digs into nerves, seeing if she can extract blood from her victim, she again warns you of improper flossing.
In today's pandemic world, all of this is done with her most protective garments, face masks, plastic shields, vacuum pumps. The noise level is extreme and she mumble her warnings into you unprotected face.
She then tells you what other services she can perform like a fluoride mouth wash, a herbal wash. more X-rays, teeth whitening. It is the equivalent of a used car salesperson in Hell.
I can appreciate the need but the gross lack of human kindness, the attitude that the patients, albeit a customer, is some form of sinner deserving of bodily punishment and personal humiliation, mostly due to improper flossing, is unbearable.
The dentist is nothing compared to this harridan of dental care. Dante would really have had included them had hey been there at the beginning of the 14th century!
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