Friday March 29th, 2024
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Who's Afraid of the Dentist?

Usually, we have a pervasive fear of the dentist. But we discovered Dr. Shady Samir's Perfect Smile Dental Center, a clinic that offers an amazing pain-free dental experience...

Staff Writer

Nobody enjoys a trip to the dentists. Fact. A pervasive condition known as Dentist Terror has been drilled into our minds since childhood. We will suffer through tooth pains for weeks on end, self-medicating by popping endless Cataflams like they're freaking vitamins, before making the dreaded trip to the dentist's chair. Hell, we'll try and pull out our own teeth before making that trip. But you know something, we have, in our day, stumbled upon several dentists who have helped alleviate this fear and have done a good job of representing dentists everywhere. We mean, they're few and far between, especially in Egypt, but they do exist, like mythical creatures. It's like stumbling upon a unicorn. Once such mythical pain-free, horror-free clinic is the Perfect Smile Dental Center in Heliopolis. Listen here, we will rarely make the trip out to Heliopolis but we will do it for this place because its one of the few 'good' (because how good can any dentist's trip be really - it means you've done something wrong) dental clinics in the city. Run by Dr. Shady Samir, the place is, if we had to sum it up in a few words, professional and pain-free. And isn’t that what everyone wants in a dentist really? Our requirement list isn't that extensive - just don’t hurt us and we'll love you forever.

Anyhow, Pefect Smile Dental Center does everything from teeth whitening to invisible braces to root canals. The place is spacey and modern – none of that decrepit run-down décor you unfortunately encounter sometimes with Egyptian doctors and dentists that makes you question their legitimacy – all marble floors and plush sofas in the waiting area. And a coffee table! A coffee table! We were downright thrilled to find that coffee table there, complete with a Nespresso machine – it was like Dr. Shady knew and understood our coffee addiction never sleeps. And we did consider taking a nap on one of the many oversized leather sofas or asking the receptionist to let us watch Game of Thrones on the flat screen TV. But we refrained.

But moving on from the trivial things that bring us joy – Dr. Shady Samir actually inherited his love of dentistry from his father, which is probably why he has better bedside manner than most of the dentists you encounter here. For those of you who don't watch Grey's Anatomy and therefore don't know what beside manner means, basically it means he was super nice and friendly, managed to somehow make us feel comfortable in that dentist chair and put our minds at ease before thrusting a needle into our gums (we got a cavity filled). And that injection was fairly painless – usually our hands are shaking with fear, but he first applied numbing gel, then gave us the injection in stages so we didn’t want to cry out for our mommies. The dentist talked to us about how important it is that patients feel comfortable in his chair and aren’t in massive pain the entire time – his philosophy is that the entire experience should be a painless one.

He's been in dentistry for over ten years, and has a master's degree from Cairo University in root canals and crowns. Now we don’t know why someone would voluntarily choose to spend a lifetime inside people's mouths, but hey, we're glad they do because someone's gotta take care of the massive damage we’ve inflicted on our teeth. From endless candy to not flossing (shhh don’t tell but come on, who really flosses daily?) to smoking to coffee, there's not much we've done right with our teeth. But thankfully, Dr. Shady Samir is the one taking care of the consequences.

The great thing about this dental clinic is that it doesn’t require endless trips; Dr. Shady gets it all done in one shot so you don’t have to keep returning. It won't be a three-month time period to get that darn root canal done. Also, we are all aware of the ridiculous waiting time in most doctors' offices in Egypt. You can easily spend a good chunk of your day waiting for your turn, and it's not like you can get up and leave in protest (they know they have us – we're not going anywhere) – you just have to sit and wait until his highness blesses you with your turn. With Dr. Shady's clinic, you actually go in at your designated time! We didn’t even know such practices existed in Egypt. Also, they call you up to double check your appointments and remind you when you need to have a checkup. We can barely keep our head on straight so we are eternally grateful for them taking take of all that tedious crap. Plus, as a general rule Egyptians don’t believe in checkups. We just wait until the pain is unbearable and then think hey, I might need to go get this checked out. So it's a good thing this dental clinic reminds us. He's also got a slew of diplomas lining his walls. This makes us a little sad because we just have one...and it's not even framed. 

Even if you don't need the dramatic root canal, Dr. Shady Samir's clinic has everything one hand to just make your teeth look pearly and white and perfect – that Hollywood smile. They have several teeth whitening options, from that famous Zoom machine that gives you perfectly white teeth in just one hour to other options (less costly ones) that you instead use for a few hours each day at home. And the final thing we discovered at this dental clinic is something we didn’t even know existed – basically teeth that you put on, on top of your regular, chipped, yellowed teeth, that are the more perfected version of your normal teeth. These are intended as a quick fix for is you have an occasion that you really want perfect teeth for. They're customized to each person obviously. The dentist tried on his own pair for us – swear we couldn’t tell the difference until he took them off! Nifty little things, those clip-on teeth…

Anyway, despite the fact that poor dentists always get such a bad rap, we're thoroughly impressed with Dr. Shady Samir's clinic. And his prices are incredibly reasonable too! AND the lovely dentist is offering up an amazing deal – if you want to get teeth whitening done at the center, and you mention Cairo Scene when you reserve, you get 20% off on it! Yeah, we're cool like that. Wink wink.

You can call the center on 012-2227-6222 or 2291-5526, check out their Facebook page here, or even follow them on Instagram @DrShadySamir.