The Tooth of Wisdom

I went for my wisdom tooth extraction today. The dentist explained that they had to saw of the top part of the tooth (the part that is visible) before removing the root of the tooth.

The funny thing about the operation is that they cover up your whole head with a cloth and have a hole where your mouth is. So you can't really see what the dentist is doing, which i guess is a good thing. But I could not help trying to imagine what the whole procedure look like and what the dentist was doing inside my mouth.

The strange thing about me was that I kept having weird thoughts while lying on the dentist chair. First, being in an age where there is advances in the medical surgery, dental surgery seems a little backward. Despite the fancy equipment, the whole procedure relied on the dentist using brute strength to pull the tooth out of the whole. Not exactly key-hole surgery here...

Second, what would compel someone to decide on dentistry? And we are not talking about the crass subject of money here. I mean, people can say they want to be doctors cause they want to save lives, was inspired by a dying parent / sibling / grandparent, or even ER? But the dentist cannot say that. How would scaling and whitening teeth make the world a better place? It would seem that the dentist is truely just in it for the money? Maybe they wanted to be doctors but could not make it?

But then, who am I to judge? The nice dentist extracted the wisdom tooth that was irritating the living shits out of me. And ... and this is a big AND ... the dentist gave me LOTS of novocaine during the operation and perscribe a lot of painkillers. Painkillers are always good ...