If you have anything like problem teeth, beware this office, which expects patients to have at most one or two small cavities. In terms of culturally responsive practices, this dentist gets a negative score: voice dripping with sarcasm, he told me that my teeth were not something he could help me with given that my jaw is "deformed" (I have an overbite, but it's like that of most people with overbites and not exactly something that you would stop on the street and gawk over) and that my dental decay (from years of bulimia that eroded my enamel) was not something he would handle. (He said he could handle it but chose not to, almost enjoying the sense that he was denying me treatment.). Let me be clear that it's not the information this practitioner conveyed that I want to warn people about: it's the flavor of open disrespect and even shaming he felt comfortable expressing, as though having "good teeth" were a sign of moral integrity. Remarkable that in 2024 in the Pioneer Valley, there are still some medical and dental practitioners who don't consider it among their professional duties to conceal whatever prejudiced beliefs they hold about their patients' health. The ideas about dentistry lodged inside this man's head are the stuff of mid-nineteenth century England: if you were a quality or refined sort of person, you would be born with a well-aligned jaw, and if you have bad teeth, it must be that you are an essentially gross, lazy, degraded person. I had the bad luck to choose this practice at random, and now I've lost that insurance-covered visit. Shame on this practitioner, and if you have any kind of non-normative identity or dental situation, beware of this practice.
Edited to add: This practitioner recommended that every single tooth be removed from my mouth. The oral surgeon refused to do this as it was too radical a treatment plan and sent me to a new dentist for a new consult because more than half of my teeth can obviously be salvaged by an unbiased practitioner willing to do the work of real dentistry. Boutique dentists should advertise themselves as boutique dentists so that real people with real human dental situations don't make the mistake of seeking treatment from them. read more
