Mouths and Medical Exams

People have always asked me, "David, why do you want to be a dentist? Mouths can be so disgusting. Spit is especially disgusting or peanut butter breath".

Things of that nature and the obvious "you know dentists have the highest suicide rate". Everyone thinks that they are oh so hilarious with that one when EVERYBODY knows that it came from The Whole Nine Yards.

To each his own I guess. Personally, I don't find the mouth to be that bad. There are other far worse things out there.

Take for example, my medical exam I had today. In order to totally gain acceptance into the Faculty of Dentistry, applicants are required to have a medical exam. The reasons for doing so are extremely straightforward. They do NOT want any dentists to have such things as Hepatitis B or HIV because of the possibility, though remote, of passing it on to patients. I agree 100% with this.

So they asked me a bunch of questions like if I smoked (I wouldn't even know how to hold it), took blood samples, blood pressure, I got tested for TB. It was pretty much a standard physical. However, the doctor wanted to check for testicular cancer...and he did.

In case you are wondering, I'm clean.

Anyway the point of the matter is, who would actually think that touching balls is better than looking in somebody's mouth? As the doctor said "This is as unpleasant for me as it is for you".

There you have it. The doctor even thinks it's disgusting.

I may have not won the war against naysayers, but at least I have won a battle.