Maintenance Is Better Than Repair

We are all used to the quote which says “Prevention is better than cure”, right?.

We can prevent a car accident from happening by driving in safely manner, and by being alert all the time. Of late, we see lots of people using their handphones while driving. And more dangerously, they even dare to read or write text SMS while driving. I used to do that too, but I’ve slowly stopped doing that, in the name of safety. I’ve seen a real video footage of a nasty car accident caused by a driver who was not paying attention while driving. His car knocked down a female pedestrian crossing a road, and she died.

In that particular scenario, the word “prevent” plays the most important role. Those are the scenarios where we can prevent something bad from happening.

But, when we talk about health, how do we prevent from something bad from happening? I mean, talking about disease, or sickness? Can we prevent everything?

Let’s just take an example on dental care. How many of us who rarely get dental problems think that taking care of our teeth is also part of healthy living? For what I know, most of us brush our teeth once or twice a day because we want to get rid of tahi gigi.

Bila masa pulak gigi kita pandai berak ni? Woops, pardon my budu language here.

In actual fact, taking care of our dental is one of the most important aspects of health. Just because we seldom get toothache, that doesn’t mean it is not important. And the way we used to prevent from dental problems to occur is by brushing our teeth, at least once a day. But as we also know, brushing our teeth alone is not enough. We need more than that.

Just as we need to send our cars for maintenance servicing so that they do not eventually cause a massive repair job, same thing for our teeth. At least once a year, we need to send our teeth for a maintenance servicing, before we end up with a massive repair job. That is, if repair is still one of the options.

Not being a good boy, I’ve neglected this maintenance service for a good four years. The last time I visited a dentist was more than four years ago, when I had to do the very painful root canal treatment. The moment I stepped out from that dental clinic, I never made a visit back again.

Until yesterday, when I can’t take it any longer with some food keep on sticking up in between my teeth every time I eat. I finally made another visit to the dentist. No, I didn’t go to Taiping to see Doctor Julinda (she’s busy running). I just went to a nearby dentist for some scaling, polishing and some filling up work. Furthermore, the validity of the dental insurance from my company is going to end in 30 day or so. Hence, better make use of it.

The scaling job was a bit nasty. We are talking about a bunch of teeth that has not been ‘serviced’ for several years. Not that I have a bad breath or rotten teeth, but it made me belief that brushing our teeth alone is not enough to properly clean them. That’s why it is recommended that we visit the dentist at least once a year.

The normal polishing job was ok. I asked about whitening too, but I don’t want to spend RM300++ just to get a sparkling white teeth. Yeah, I may be a drama-man, but I’m not a celebrity. And let’s not talk about the whitening process using laser, which costs more than a thousand Ringgit (I better save it for Cervelo.. hihi).

I had to fill up three small holes in my teeth. My jaw was sore from the non-stop jaw opening action. The price for filling up has raised quite tremendously lah. I’m not whether sure it is due to the professional workmanship, or the cost of the filler material, or to compensate for the lack of dental patients coming into the clinic. All in all, I spent a good amount of money, of which I can get myself a new pair of running shoes. Inflation, inflation… sigh.

The funny thing was, the dentist who was very friendly kept on asking me about where I work lah, about what I do at work lah, what kind of products I design lah; all during the time when my mouth was wide open and she was using her tools to clean up my teeth. How to answer lah?

“Hokher… hulut haye herhange hachang hi, hachahane haye hak hakhap?”