I took the medical benefits for granted when I was in the active-duty military.
Which I think is pretty normal.
You don’t think about benefits when you’re young.
Or pensions. Or commissary privileges.
Then, one day, you have to start paying for all the stuff that hadn’t cost you a dime when you wore the uniform.
And you come to see benefits in an entirely new light.
The same light in which old people see it.
Which may or may not make you old.
Anyway.
Not only was it common to have zero appreciation for the medical and dental benefits you enjoyed as a young service member, but it was also fashionable to thoroughly trash military doctors and dentists.
A bunch of hacks who couldn’t make it on the outside.
That’s how you’d describe them.
This, despite their having been thoroughly educated and trained and highly competent in their chosen fields.
“They’re butchers, Dan, they’re butchers!” said this one dude in my boot camp company.
Switzer.
All of us in Company C-190 were convinced he’d escaped from a psychiatric treatment facility.
His rack was next to mine, which apparently made him feel comfortable enough to confide in me.
Switzer was from a small town in Pennsylvania and was afraid of dentists.
So much so that he’d completely avoided them for the entirety of his upbringing.
And that, predictably, had caused him to have all kinds of issues with his teeth, which the Navy was intent upon fixing before assigning him to a ship or some remote location.
While the rest of us were off marching on the grinder, Switzer was often at the dental clinic getting his mouth worked on.
Which I’m sure was unpleasant.
And even caused him to contemplate going AWOL.
“I tell you, Dan, I can’t take it! I can’t take much more of this!” Switzer would say. “I gotta get out of here . . .”
I think you get arrested for that, I told him.
“Arrested?” he replied. “Why? We’re already in prison!”
Somehow, Switzer made it through bootcamp, and we wound up in the same follow-on training class.
We were shipped off to Naval Air Station Meridian, Mississippi, where his dental woes followed him.
They needn’t have.
But this was Switzer.
The Navy dentists had presumably resolved his various issues satisfactorily enough for him to graduate basic training.
However, Switzer was convinced they’d completely botched his treatment.
So, he found some civilian dentist in the backwoods of Meridian to “fix” everything the Navy docs had done back in bootcamp.
He’d sneak off to appointments a couple times a week.
About a month into our training, Switzer began singing a familiar tune.
“These dentists out in town . . . they’re butchers, Dan! I tell you, they’re butchers!” he’d say.
Shit, Switzer.
I don’t know what became of him.
Or his mouth.
But I suspect both enjoyed only a brief tenure in our nation’s armed forces.
And he got it all wrong about military dentists.
Perhaps I did, too, when I was younger.
Even though I can’t remember having had a single negative experience with any military doctor of any variety.
The same was not true of my civilian dentist.
I’d experienced months of discomfort following the installation of a couple of crowns.
The dentist who’d recommended the procedure and later performed it had decent enough ratings online.
Not that I’d wanted to go looking for a new dentist.
But my previous dentist had stopped taking my insurance.
So, I’d turned to the internet to fine someone else.
My wife disliked the new dentist immediately.
Both she and my daughter had had a series of negative experiences with her and had already moved on to a different provider.
I’d had an okay experience—do you ever have a good experience with a dentist?—and decided to stay the course.
And then the crowns.
It got so bad following the procedure that a bowl of hot curry reduced me to tears one night at dinner.
The sensitivity was ridiculous. Excruciating.
When I shared this with the dentist, she said there was nothing she could do.
I probably needed a root canal, she said, and referred me to an endodontist.
Fantastic.
That was on a Friday, and I scheduled the root canal for the following Tuesday.
Then, miraculously, the pain disappeared.
Gone. Completely.
I canceled the root canal.
And remained pain-free for months.
What explained that? I asked the dentist.
“I dunno,” she said. “It probably just resolved itself.”
Resolved itself?
What does that mean?
“Sounds like total B.S. to me,” said the Air Force Colonel who examined me several months later.
It’s a requirement in the Navy Reserve to see a military dentist periodically for check-ups.
I was getting mine at Offutt Air Force Base, where I did my reserve duty for U.S. Strategic Command.
The Colonel, a career Air Force dentist, specialized in prosthodontics and wanted to better understand my experience.
“Let’s get some more x-rays, Coop,” she said to the sharp Airman who served as her technician. “I want to get a better look at this.”
A few minutes later, the doc flashed the images of my teeth up on a monitor that sat on the counter in the examination room.
“Hmm,” she said. “This is interesting.”
She began with a critique of my civilian dentist’s work.
“Okay, but not great,” the Colonel said. “I mean, it’s fine, but it isn’t perfect. I want to see perfect.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
And then she started circling a dark area in the image of one my teeth with her finger.
“That could be a problem,” she said. “It might be a dead nerve, which opens the door to infection.”
When the pain in my tooth abruptly stopped, it may have been the result of the nerve’s demise.
“Let me send you down the hall to see the endodontist,” said the Colonel. “He can decide whether we need to do something about this.”
“Yes, we do,” said the endodontist, an Air Force Major.
The verdict: root canal.
The nerves in my tooth were indeed dead.
Upon hearing the news, the Colonel asked how long I was in town.
I explained that I was on two-week, active-duty orders.
“Okay,” she said. “Since you’re a reservist, we can only work on you while you’re on orders.”
The Colonel and the Major then got together to re-arrange their schedules to accommodate me.
Five days later, the root canal was complete.
And the Colonel had addressed a couple of other minor issues I’d raised, which would have required multiple appointments with my civilian dentist.
My mouth is probably healthier now than it was when I was a Lieutenant.
Which is remarkable for a couple of reasons.
First, a dental exam in the reserves is usually a check-the-box exercise.
But I often use it to get second opinions.
Civilian providers have a clear profit motive.
And I am certain that influences how, when, and to what extent they prescribe certain procedures.
The same is not true of military dentists.
Their charge is readiness: to ensure members can go over the horizon without being impaired by health issues.
As such, I feel free to lay everything on the table with military dentists, just as I did with the Colonel in this case.
And both the Colonel and Major, in turn, ran every issue I raised completely to ground.
I appreciated that.
The second thing I find remarkable is how much out-of-pocket expense I avoided, thanks to the diligence of a couple of Air Force dentists.
I am certain that, even with insurance, the care I received in a one-week period would have cost me hundreds on the outside.
Maybe even thousands.
So, you see, I think differently about military medical benefits these days.
As well as military doctors and dentists.
I appreciate them, to say the least.
But I’m sure there are still plenty of Switzers out there.
Who have no idea how good they have it.
Which is fine.
They won’t stick around long.
And perhaps people like the fine Colonel and Major I encountered at Offutt Air Force Base can focus their energies on people who appreciate their services.
Like some random Navy reservist on two-week orders.
Oh, and I’m firing that civilian dentist.
My wife was right about her.
It’s time to move on.
And in the meantime,
Go, Air Force!
Dentistry.
Air Force Dentistry.
Let’s not get carried away here.