One of my lesser childhood memories involved trudging into Dr. Scotty Patton's dentist office in downtown Phillipsburg, Kansas. It's never fun or exciting to go to the dentist, and I'm sure that a huge amount of my residual anxiety to this day stems from those...visits...to that office.
We O'Neills didn't lack for dental hygiene, mind you. We brushed; we had the benefits of fluoridated water in our progressive little town. But for some reason, Dr. Scotty Patton managed to find an exceptional amount of tooth decay in our mouths. I mean...a lot.
It didn't seem to matter what we did; we always had cavities. And our mouths filled up with silver.
I probably shouldn't complain; after all, Tom ended up with braces and Jim should have, but was so traumatized by Dr. Scotty Patton and his endless fillings that he never wanted to go near an orthodontist. But my own personal "drill and fill" episodes left me with a sour taste for dentistry for decades.
And the gas! Dr. Scotty Patton tried nitrous on me exactly once. I'm one of those who doesn't take to it well. Let's just say it was a bad trip. Further increasing my fear and shunning of all the DDS's of the world well into my 30s.
Finally, about 18 years ago (!), I found a dentist I could trust - Mike Golinvaux, a kind, earnest, conservative dentist who has answered every single one of my questions, considered and inane, ever since a former sales manager at my Courtyard hotel in Denver recommended him. Mike firmly believes in keeping and preserving teeth - and when he first looked at mine, he was flabbergasted to see all the silver. "A lot of fillings here...but they're all very shallow surface fillings. At least they're done well - we don't have to even touch these for a while."
And so it went over the years. Mike has handled a couple of crowns for me, and has slowly replaced silver with white composite fillings, but he takes his sweet time. Other dentists might have said "get rid of all of 'em - that silver amalgam is so passe, and possibly harmful with the mercury in 'em!" Mike's take: "Hey, they're stable and not breaking down...let's not worry about them for now."
Thanks to Mike, I have little dread when going to see him these days - and I've seen him exclusively since that first time, even when I had to move to Atlanta and now Austin. A few weeks ago, he decided to re-fill two rear upper molars, and I marveled at how the anesthetic works these days - painless shots and painless drilling in only about 3 minutes after the injection!
Once the molars were filled, I asked if they were old Dr. Scotty Patton silver amalgams, and Mike said "They were, Brian - and they were the last ones!" After almost 40 years, my mouth is Dr. Scotty Patton free.
I surmised long ago that drill-and-fill was a lucrative way for Dr. Scotty Patton to make extra dough in a small town that trusted all medical professionals and wouldn't know any better. But as a small consolation, I take a bit of comfort in knowing that he made the highest-quality, longest-lasting silver fillings one could ask for. (Mike says silver amalgams usually last 20 years tops.)
My mouth is now silver-free, with just a hint of gold from a couple of crowns in the back. My teeth are all mine, they're white, and I intend to keep 'em that way!
