I hate dentists. (No offense.)

I had to visit the dentist last week.  I've had more than my share of time in the dentist's chair over the years, and I've reached a point where I only demand one thing from my dentist:

NO PAIN.

Oh, I can hear it already:  "But aren't you an Ironman?  You said you love suffering.  What a baby!"  It's a fair criticism.  But there is a big difference between suffering on a race course and drilling holes into bones with a hot, rotating metal wedge.  Here is my main complaint about dentists, and it happens to be related to my only demand of dentists (see above).  Dentists have still not solved the most important problem with their profession.  They make you HURT!

Here are my new-age dentist's tools ---->

See anything high-tech or space-age here?  Nope.  These tools belong at a Steampunk Convention, not a dentist's office.  Filament-based light bulbs have advanced more in the last 100 years than dentists, when it comes to pain. 

My latest visit to the dentist is a perfect example of this problem.  My first visit involved a lot of drilling in preparation for a crown.  I warned the dentist that my nerves are apparently shaped like spider webs, and that no amount of novacaine can completely numb my back teeth.  Every dentist I've had, and I mean EVERY dentist, eventually has to say, "Well, I've given you the legal limit of novacaine, so you're just going to have to endure this for the next two minutes."  Yet every new dentist says, "Oh ... my patients NEVER experience pain ..."

So, like clockwork, the first visit involved some painful drilling, and once again, my dentist was surprised.  "Well, I've given you the legal limit ..."  When I visited the office for the installation of the crown two weeks later, I told the assistant, "This tooth hurt when he drilled it, so are you planning to shoot me up?"  She said, "No, it doesn't hurt to put on the crown, and we like our patients to have feeling in their teeth so they can tell us whether the crown fits."  She then pulled off the temporary crown and scraped my tooth.  She might as well have stuck the scraper in my eyeball.  It hurt so bad I about ripped off the faux-leather armrest.  "Oh, that hurt?"  "Yeah, Sherlock Holmes, that HURT."

So after the mandatory, "Wow, this doesn't typically hurt my patients" from the dentist, he gave me the legal limit of novacaine again.  Here I am waiting for the shots to set in, clearly enjoying myself...

My conclusion is this:  For all the claims of advances in dental care, the dentists still haven't figured out how to not make it hurt.  My dentist bragged about his new device that took computer images of my old tooth so that the new crown would fit perfectly -- more perfectly than a human could have crafted one.  And the cement he used bonded in fractions of a second, and it would last years longer than the old cement.  And wow, look at the natural tooth color of the new crown.  You almost can't tell, can you?  That's all wonderful, sir, but MY MOUTH HURTS!

If everyone acted like dentists, imagine the state of our country ...

1. Ford Motor Company would still be producing millions of horse buggies, but with ever improving interiors made with Italian leather.
2. Oregon Trail would still be the only computer game, but it would run extremely fast on your Apple II-y.
3. IBM would create increasingly efficient (and amazingly quiet) typewriters.
4. TV producers would give up on writing captivating scripts and just film "reality."  Oh, wait ...
5. AT&T would develop an incredibly crisp speaker to attach to both ends of a piece of string.

So, how about it, science?  Can we develop pain-free dental care?