text: I'm a dentist.\n\nRead these words carefully:\n\nThere is procedure that your dentist performs that should cause you pain.  The only thing that should hurt is the injection of local anesthetic, which, if done properly, should hurt only minimally.\n\nOnce profound anesthesia of the tooth has been obtained, you should only sense the vibration of the drill and the air/water in your mouth.  There should be no pain.\n\nI cannot tell you, however, how long the procedure will take.  It depends on the extent of the decay, the number of tooth surfaces involved, the doctor's experience, the restoration material to be used, the quality of the doctor's assistant, your ability to open your mouth wide and keep your mouth opened wide (more on this below), and the extent to which you salivate.  Generally, on a good patient, placing a two-surface amalgam filling takes me about ten to fifteen minutes.  A two surface composite (i.e. tooth-colored) filling runs about twenty minutes.  A fidgety patient who repeatedly closes his/her mouth will require more time.\n\nOne of the things that patients do to make our job difficult is not open their f-ing mouths wide.  You tell them "open wide" and they'll open wide for two seconds before closing half way again.  The less you open, the less we can see, which understandibly means that the quality of our work is less.  When your doctor says "open wide", that means you should open wide and keep your mouth opened wide until he/she tells you to close.  It's in your best interest to do so.