Pick it up. It is yours.
Start your own chart
This is the tablet June hands you at the counter. Say what brought you, press the tooth, and the chart marks it in red: what we would check, in what order, whether it will hurt, and what it costs. No chart started? The answers above still hold: $95, 40 minutes, no treatment today.
Numbers are the ones we call out while charting, so the sounds at your visit will not be a surprise. Not sure which tooth? Pain wanders. Press the rough area, or none at all.
What a first visit does about an ache
No tooth crossed yet. Press one above and this gets specific.
A cross on a chart is not a diagnosis. It cannot be. This says what we would check and what each part feels like. The finding out happens at the visit, with the tooth in front of us.
Work the lever. Press STOP.
Recline it. Then stop it cold.
Our one rule, agreed sitting up before anything starts: raise your left hand, or in this rehearsal press the red STOP button, and everything stops. Instruments out, chair up, no questions until you say go.
The rehearsal, sitting up: her hand goes up, Dr Rao's hands come away, and nobody asks why until she says go. A generated photograph of the same invented patient.
The text we send the night before, opened
Your first forty minutes
June takes your name
Two forms, one about medications. Six waiting chairs, local radio on low. Most visits start within five minutes of the hour booked.
The dentist, sitting up
Eye level, a normal conversation first, and the stop signal agreed while you can still talk freely.
Back as far as you chose
A bib, glasses against the light, and a mirror. That is all that goes in your mouth for a while.
Counting and charting
Numbers called out, nurse tapping them into the chart on the wall screen where you can see it. It sounds like bingo and gives us the starting map. A copy goes to your phone.
X-rays only if they change the plan
Small, quick, asked for first, $25 each, and shown to you with the findings pointed at.
The plan, priced in writing
Sitting up again. The plan is texted to you and printed if you want it. Decide at home. Text back to book, or do not. Both are acceptable endings.
Out the door, nothing numb
Drive, eat, go back to work. A first visit leaves no mark but a plan you understand.
Turn it over
The children's sticker sheet
A first visit for a small child is a chair ride and a count, twenty minutes, parent on the stool in reach. Only as much looking as they offer, and we stop on a win.
The back of the sheet, for grown-ups: switch the pad above to Small teeth and count along at home first. Saturday mornings once a month are children's only, both chairs, siblings back to back. No scolding, either of you.
The acrylic sign by the card reader
Prices, where you pay
| First visit, grown-up40 minutes, charting and plan, no treatment | $95 |
| First visit, under 12Chair ride and a count | $40 |
| Emergency appointmentCause found, pain down, next step agreed | $75 |
| Small x-rayOnly if it changes the plan | $25 |
| Clean and polishHonest hurt: 1 to 2 of 5 | $110 |
| Small filling, fromExact price written first | $180 |
| Crown, fromTwo visits, two weeks apart | $950 |
The red slots on today's schedule
In pain now
8:40 & 9:20 dailyThe first two chairs each weekday are never booked ahead. They belong to whoever telephones from 8:15 in pain, registered here or not.
- Counts: pain that kept you awake, a swollen face, a tooth broken with pain, bleeding that will not settle.
- The aim is small: find the cause, take the pain down, agree the proper fix. $75 whatever the cause.
- Out of hours, the voicemail names the on-call dentist. A swollen face with trouble swallowing is urgent care first, not a dental queue.
Who you will meet, and the hours on the glass door
Dr Maya Rao · Chair 1
Here since 2016. Most of her list arrived nervous and stayed. She narrates everything and splits hard jobs across two calm visits.
Dr Tom Ellery · Chair 2
Here since 2019. Runs children's Saturday mornings and fixes front teeth before weddings.
Priya & Jess, nurses
They tap the chart as numbers are called and spot a raised hand first.
June, reception
Guards the emergency chairs and answers the texts. If it has been ten years, June has heard twenty. It is fine.
Hours & finding us
Monday to Friday, doors 8:15 AM, last chair 4:50 PM. 214 Alder Street, blue door with our hours on the glass. Step-free throughout. Harbor parking lot 150 steps, buses 4 and 11 at the door. Reminders by text the night before.
On the door glass: 4.9 from 312 post-visit texts in the last year. The words on June's phone above are two of them, initials changed.