Aukje de Vries' Diary Day 25

I have another dentist’s appointment this week. In a way I am hesitant to tell too much about my experiences with the dentist. It reminds me of the time I was a teenager. Quite often, after I had come home from school, my Uncle John would visit us. Uncle John happened to have a dentist, who had his practice not far from where we lived and he used to come over for tea with us, after his dentist’s appointments. He would open his mouth and show us what the dentist had done and then would elaborate on how the dentist had done it and how expensive this was. We were not too fond of uncle John anyway, but these visits were just awful. Right there and then I decided never to be too explicit about my own experiences with the dentist. If I still want to tell about this week’s visit it is because of the technology. The dentist is rather new for me, I only go to his practice since half a year, because my former dentist retired. He is a man in his early forties, I guess. He was going to make two crowns. He had a special machine, containing a computer on which he showed a picture, obviously taken of my teeth, but I do not know at which stage of the treatment. On this computer he started to draw the contours of the crown. When he drew them (just like drawing on my own computer), he worked in a flat picture, but he could also show what he had done in three dimensions. Gradually he developed on the screen a nice model of a crown. He then sent a message to a machine in the next room and five minutes later the crown was ready. He let me hold the little thing in my hand. It was highly amazing and very efficient. I tend to be sceptical when computer lovers elaborate about all the wonders computers can work, (especially to reduce the costs of long- term care) and I think that quite a few of their prognoses are based on wishful thinking, but what the dentist did was really amazing!