I LOVE my dentist.

I have the best dentist in the world.

He said I could put in his name, so here it is: Dr. Joseph Imbriale, in Coral Springs, FL.

It's not just him. It's how he chose his whole staff and office, too. They're just a happy, good bunch of people. It's a comfortable place to go. Welcoming. Safe. So cozy it makes me want to stop by on my errands, just to stick my head in the door and say, Hi!

To a dental phobe like me, that makes all the difference in the world.

When I first started seeing him in the early 1990's, I'd just moved back to Florida from Louisiana. Newly disabled, broke, ill, and unsure of how to work around my disability, I was also determined not to fall behind on dental care.

It's not a small point. Teeth are really important. Got a heart defect, like my mitral valve prolapse? Keep your teeth professionally cleaned and cared for. You'll live longer. Literally.

Dr. Imbriale never once made me feel like I was asking too much with all the special needs I have for super-clean air. Never made me feel like he thought I was some crazy nut, either. Ever. The first time we did a bond-type filling, I had a sensitivity reaction to the chemical before it hardened. My whole airway spasmed. Scary. This guy thinks quick. He got a suction tube to suck the tainted air out so I could breathe again. I will never forget this. And after that, he'd set up to do it that way from the beginning, so I could get my nice metal-free fillings.

More yet: He has always, unfailingly, been completely and absolutely patient with my dental phobia.

The only way I can get dental work done is with nitrous oxide and extra novacaine. I didn't learn this until a couple years ago, but fibromyalgia patients have way extra pain nerves, to go along with our brains being hard-wired to feel pain so intensely. In PET scans, our brains light up in a whole different place than *normal* people in response to pain stimulus.

This research wasn't done yet, back in the early '90's. But Dr. Imbriale could tell I had *aberrant nerves,* and knew how to go about numbing me in places that most people don't even have nerves to numb. No other dentist had done this for me before. It worked.

I also have post traumatic stress disorder. This is mostly from non-dental experiences, but dental ones too. Horrible things happened to me at other dentist's offices, like injuries from slipped tools that needed stitches, oh I won't go into all that on THIS post. Terrible stuff. And PTSD has a way of popping up inappropriately. It used to happen with me at his office sometimes. And again, he understood, and never once lost patience with me.

Want more? I have *arthritis* in my gums. Okay, they call it something else, I forget the name. But the ligament in your gums - the part that connects gum to teeth - gets inflamed from the inflammatory disease I have. And God above, that hurts.

Better yet? I have extremely sensitive teeth. Getting them cleaned can have me climbing the walls in pain. Not just *pain* - there's something about that gum line tooth scraping that is just absolutely totally creepy and horrid. Oh.

Suffice it to say: I was a white-knuckle patient. This, in the presence of the one dentist who never ever EVER gave me reason to go white knuckle.

Like that Billy Joel song - *I am an innocent man!* And here my dentist goes paying the price for something he never did wrong.

He's got marine life pix on the walls - dolphins, here. Talk about soothing. He has a boat, so he comes by his love of dolphins honestly. Want music? Got music. Just my kind for relaxing, too.

He uses that topical anesthetic before the needle.

Everyone in there gets along very well, cracking jokes and doing their work, so there's never any feeling of interpersonal tension in the air.

His assistant is smart and nice and very good, intent on doing an exceptional job. A lot of other workers could learn a lesson from her on that count.

I was embarrassed about my teeth, this visit. Very. When I say we had it rough the last three years, here's one place it showed. And dental care has a very high priority in my budget. I'll go without food to keep my teeth healthy.

But what did he say? --Oh, look, that's really not bad at all!

***WHEW!!!***

not to mention---

HA! (not BAD?!? I don't think so.)

He says this to a patient who's been walking around for like six months with a tooth that's broken and crumbling away to a nub.

Either he's that nice, or some other people out there have worse teeth than I thought.

Okay. Obviously that broken one needs a crown. But the other one that was hurting? A big ol' cavity UNDER a crown. It went so far down into the gum he pulled out all this odd-looking equipment I'd never seen before, in order to get in there. But he did it. He got the job done. And now, I won't need a root canal.

See, on top of everything else? He's the best dentist I've ever had. By far. His work is superb. His fillings never fall out. He fits your dental work in perfectly so your teeth don't bump and hurt. He knows how to shape them so if you had a spacing problem, where you couldn't fit the floss in, or where food would get stuck, he can correct it. When he does special type fillings, he shapes them like an artist. Just extraordinary.

If you have a piece of floss or food stuck in a gum or tooth? Come on in and he'll take it out for free. He doesn't want his patients to stop flossing for fear of those little shreds we sometimes get.

He doesn't BS you about expensive gum disease treatments if you don't need them.

Your tooth is broke and so are you? Talk to him. Chances are real good y'all can work something out.

It's been a long time since I had any white knuckles over there.

Great dentistry is one of those supposedly *little* things in life that aren't actually little at all.