Dental cleanings in the time of plague

[sholio]

I had a scheduled dental cleaning today and decided to go ahead and keep the appointment. For the most part it's not that different from normal, but it was interesting seeing how office procedures have changed.


They called me the day before and had me answer some questions: had I been out of state recently, did I have any symptoms like fever/coughing, had I been around anyone who did, etc.

You need to wear a mask in the office. All magazines have been removed from the waiting area. They don't mind people being in the waiting area, though. My dental office is a small mother/daughter practice and they own the entire building, so there's a large waiting area that rarely has very many people in it (today, there was no one else out there when I was) and the building in general is open and airy with lots of space, which I now appreciate for entirely new reasons.

As soon as you come in, there's a hand sanitizer station and you need to use it. Everyone, of course, is masked. When they take you into the back, they take your temperature with a forehead thermometer and go through the same list of symptom/exposure questions as yesterday.

From there it proceeds like a normal appointment; the only difference is that they no longer use any of the tools that tend to spray aerosols in the air: no air polisher, no Cavitron. It was all manual scraping and the old-style grit polisher.

The one thing they really don't have down yet is what to do with your mask after you take it off. Nobody prompted me to do anything with it, and after holding it for a while I asked if it was okay to put it on the edge of a counter (which I assume are sanitized regularly and probably pretty safe). I didn't like having to put my mask back on after having it off for an hour with all kinds of potential aerosols about, but there's really no way around a certain minimal amount of risk; I had my hair all over the dental chair too, since I forgot to put it up before leaving the house.

It was the most time I've spent that close to a person I'm not married to in three months. Also, since everyone is usually masked and gloved for dental cleanings anyway, that part of it felt astonishingly normal, complete with idle chitchat while your mouth is too full of garden tools to answer.



On the way back, I stopped to get coffee from a drive-thru and the person in front of me paid for me. :') I decided to keep it going and paid for the person behind me. It was such a nice surprise.

Comments

[sheron]

Hmmm, I should find out if my dental place is still open. They closed back in April (which is of course when I had the appointment) but they might be open now and I should really find out just in case.

[sholio]

Yeah, ours was closed for a while and I'm not sure when they reopened, although by the time I called to confirm about my appointment this week they told me they were no longer having to rearrange/reschedule people to make up for the missed appointments, so apparently it got sorted relatively quickly.

I decided it was better to keep the appointment now than to worry about getting it done later when things might be even worse.

[lunabee34]

What a lovely gesture. Something like always makes my day.

[madripoor_rose]

Interesting! When Dad went in to see our dentist the other day....we weren't allowed in the waiting room, it was stay in the car and the hygenist comes out to the parking lot to wave you in, he's only allowed two patients at a time, and closing for a half hour between appointments to clean.

[st_aurafina]

That's a good headsup about the mask - I'll bring a spare when it's time for my next appointment. I can shove the first one in a bag for washing later, or something.

There's been a lot of that pay-it-forward thing lately, and it's very heartening.

[oracne]

I'm glad it went well.

[leesa_perrie]

Sounds an interesting experience. I think my dentists is still only doing emergency work atm. Our annual check up was moved from April to September, so I guess we'll see what it's like then!

The paid-for coffee was a lovely surprise! :D

[winter_elf]

yea, I need to re-make my dental cleaning appt. Mine was cancelled in April. My dentist just opened this last week or so (they sent an email to everyone) for 'regular appointments', along with the list of things you mentioned above AND a warning that they would be charging Extra fees for PPE that we had to pay at the appointment. *sigh* I don't know how much this new fee is going to be yet, as I haven't called.