I am a fairly holistic-minded individual, so I deliberately searched for a dentist covered by my insurance who seemed like-minded. I do not like unnecessary x-rays and avoid dentists who still use amalgams, so Dr. Satloff seemed like a good fit.
His office is about an hour from my house, but I thought the trip would be worthwhile. Plus, I was having tooth pain and bleeding gums and I was way overdue to see a dentist.
When I called for an appt., his receptionist was very helpful and everything seemed pretty normal. Even when I got there, I was greeted by a nice woman named Roxanne and she handed me a whole bunch of paperwork to fill out in the waiting room.
So, the waiting room -- decorated in 1980s flair -- is full of cobwebs. Kind of weird, I thought. And the paperwork includes a long discourse on the doctor's accomplishments, background, and practices. This was sloppily over-xeroxed at a slant onto the top page of the forms.
Finally, after my hand is practically cramped from the paperwork, I am called in to a very tiny room which is mostly taken up by the dental chair. The chair faces the wall, so the doctor sort of slithered in behind me and startled me. I was a little taken aback by his appearance. Specifically, the fact that this dentist's teeth were BEYOND yellow... I would put them in the almost-orange category. I mean really gross. And his demeanor? The word that comes to mind is "odd." Borderline creepy.
He quizzed me on everything I wrote on my sheet, most of which had nothing to do with my teeth. He never asked what DENTAL issues I had, nor was this question asked on the extensive paperwork (although there was plenty of stuff related to cosmetic dentistry).
He then proceeded to poke at my teeth, rattling off codes to his assistant. Then he holds his fingers to the side of my head like antennae and says he is checking my cranial joints. After this, he decides to obsess about a blemish near my lip. He has the assistant photograph it with what looked like a normal handheld digital camera held about 8 inches from my face.
Finally, he gets down to cleaning my teeth. This took about 10 minutes, tops. He scraped a little, polished a little. Only let me spit into the little sink once (and the water cup at the sink was USED...ewww!) The whole time he was working on my teeth his protruding belly was pressed against my head, which totally weirded me out.
So, when he's done I'm thinking he's going to tell me I need a filling or my gums are bleeding because x, y, and z or whatever. But, NO, he starts telling me what lyme disease bacterias I've tested positive for and then (with a very serious glare) informs me the blemish on my face is herpes! Which he knew from what, a digital photo? It's not like he swabbed it.
Then he hands me a sheet of paper with these findings on it in illegible handwriting and tells me to go see a lyme specialist. What about my teeth, I ask. Get x-rays, he says. Then he ushers me out.
What?!! I could barely process the whole thing because it was so weird. I went to the dentist and the only thing he told me about my teeth was "get x-rays"???
When I got home I looked up HH-V6 -- the very grim herpes news he delivered -- and it turns out we ALL have HH-V6.
Now I have to wait another 6 months to get a REAL dentist visit covered by my insurance.
