It does make me wonder about my lifetime of cavities, when I only ever was experiencing pain once. And dentists saying “we want to take care of this decay before it progresses”

Had I not had a routine dental X-ray at my second-to-last routine dentist appointment, they wouldn’t have noticed my thoroughly fucked-up tooth anywhere near as soon and I’d have had a lot more pain and potential for major infection before getting it extracted.

At least that one particular routine dental X-ray, I was extremely thankful for. My only regret is that it wasn’t a little sooner to save me more of the pain I did have.