A toothache during confinement has allowed me to discover what it will be like to go to the dentist of the future. For the immediate future, at least. It's a lot like what ET must have felt when government agents dragged him out of Eliott's house in those space suits through plastic tunnels. In my case, instead of an alien, I was hiding a root canal and Ana, my dentist, didn't have Steven Spielberg's budget for the 'props'. Even so, the showy staging of a consultation in times of the coronavirus is given an air. It is the experience of the last few weeks that has made it clearer to me how much our lives are going to change when we leave home again.

I am the first patient to receive this consultation since the state of alarm was decreed six weeks ago. My dentist, many of the 40,000 in Spain, canceled all appointments because, although theoretically they are essential and they can open, it seemed the most sensible thing to do given the lack of safety guarantees for both staff and patients. Only emergencies are attended and some not even that. The General Council of Dentists has drawn up a laborious protocol for returning to work in times of the coronavirus and since I have been enduring the pain for several weeks, I have been the first chosen to test the new security measures.

Upon entering the clinic, absolutely all the instruments are wrapped in transparent plastic wrap like the one used in the kitchen. Like the one in the kitchen, not the one in the kitchen, clarifies my dentist, who receives me behind a plastic screen that he wears as a visor. It has been 3D printed by a high school teacher to lend a hand, because his usual suppliers are not dispensing material during confinement. The dental chair where I am going to sit is also covered, but not with plastic, but with paper tablecloths that looked like they were from Mercadona.

"As a precaution we are all supposed to act as if we are infected and that is an even bigger mess at the dentist"

The new precautions in times of pandemic have started even before entering. First of all, you have to take your temperature before attending the appointment. With 36.7º there will be no problem. I push the bell with my elbow when I get there because I'm super psyched to take extreme precautions. Since the confinement began, buttons have worried me a lot, I fear being one of those asymptomatic people who, without knowing it, could spread the virus to whoever presses it later. As a precaution we are all supposed to act as if we were infected and that is an even bigger mess at the dentist, where it is impossible to keep your mouth shut.

Just two months ago, the last time I was in this office at Príncipe de Vergara, wiping my feet on the entrance mat was the only precaution I took before entering. Now the first thing, as soon as I say good morning after a mask, I must clean my hands and shoes with hydroalcoholic gel. Yes, also the shoes, with a spray that is at the entrance for it. You have to fumigate your shoes with a sprayer and then put on some plastic leggings before taking a step. And again the hand gel.

Before he arrives, they have disinfected the entire clinic, walls included, with a solution of sodium hypochlorite in a pressure sprayer that he had at home to fumigate trees. In the waiting room there used to be six or seven chairs, now they have only left two. It couldn't be more minimalist. It is required by the new protocol of the College of Dentists. It also recommends removing tables, paintings, vases and all kinds of information brochures and board games. Courtesy magazines have also disappeared, because the coronavirus can remain on paper and cardboard for 24 hours. They run the risk of staying as a pre-covid-19 memory. In Denmark, they have also been banned as a precaution in newly reopened hairdressers after confinement.

The office bathroom has also changed. They have removed the hand dryer and towels. Laminated instructions explain how to wash your hands for 40 seconds and there are disposable paper napkins to dry off. It is also forbidden to brush your teeth in this space. Now that is curious. Forbidden to brush your teeth at the dentist. It makes sense, given that the greatest risk of contagion is precisely in the droplets that we release through our mouths. Another of those everyday gestures turned by covid-19 into a minefield.

My dentist and his assistant each wear two masks behind the plastic screen. They have bought them at the pharmacy, just like hydroalcoholic gels, at pharmacy prices. 80% of Spanish dentists state that they have not been able to acquire the PPE they need and the remaining 20% ​​may not even have tried, because 1 in 4 does not even attend emergencies. For two weeks the distributors have put an answering machine and do not answer the calls. So being able to treat me with this emergency root canal may be costing my dentist more money than he charges for the consultation. Until May, the providers of medical supplies have told them that they will not supply, they suspect that it has something to do with the mess of pricing and the shortage of material. The fact is that they have preferred to wait for everything to be clarified and only accept orders by 'e-mail' from April 30. So until May this clinic will not open the consultation and will begin little by little to resume appointments for orthodontics, which hardly generates aerosols and is therefore less risky.

In the consultation they also wear laminated gowns that are made with garbage bags. They are like the ones doctors have been using in hospitals these days, the clinical assistant explains to me. She herself has been volunteering to make hundreds of these gowns following a video tutorial to help the staff of the Hospital Infanta Leonor de Vallecas, who urgently needed protection during the health crisis. These handmade black robes have sleeves and even cuffs. The creator of it proudly shows them to me because it must not be easy to make that pucker with a rubber band and a glass. The sleeves, which are the hardest thing to do in these artisan robes, she heat-seals using her own hair straightener. You have to be careful not to press too hard so that the plastic of the garbage bag doesn't burn or press too little because then it won't seal, but after making 500 gowns like these you can see that you already have practice.

Before sitting on the couch, I have to put on a hat and pour hydroalcoholic gel on my hands again, although they remind me that I can't touch anything. They also put protective plastic glasses on me. Now my eyes are also covered in plastic, like everything else around me. It took more than an hour to wrap everything in plastic wrap. According to protocol, it could also be aluminum foil, and then it would have looked like the setting of a low-budget movie of the future. As soon as I leave they will remove all that plastic and carefully throw it in the trash and re-disinfect all surfaces. The same procedure must be repeated for each patient. It will be difficult to make the sessions profitable, because before the coronavirus, in four hours, they could see twenty patients. With this security protocol, it won't give more than three or four time. Today, as it is the test day, there will be only two of us in the whole morning.

At least dentists are used to security protocols, but measures like these are going to have to be implemented in all types of businesses once they reopen adapted to the new times of covid-19. The new security conditions will require that between patient and patient it is necessary to ventilate for ten minutes, but opening the window without there being any current. The protocol, with 39 pages of detailed instructions, does not even allow centralized air conditioning to be connected in case it transmits the virus between rooms.

All this ruckus and we haven't even started yet. I rinse before I start with a mouthwash with diluted hydrogen peroxide because, as they explain to me, that will lower my viral load (if I had one). They believe that these precautions are here to stay for a long time. "It's going to be a very complicated few years, but you have to put up with it," Ana tells me, that when she receives me she doesn't even know after six weeks if they are going to grant her the ERTE that she requested a month and a half ago. Although she has had the clinic closed as a precaution, until this week the Government specifically authorized it in a new decree, it was not clear whether or not the dentists could benefit from the cause of force majeure. Although they did not even have at their disposal the material with which to protect themselves from an obvious risk of contagion.

And while I'm listening, there I am, lying on my back with my mouth open, as one lies down at the dentist. Wearing plastic glasses, I watch their faces behind the laminated screens looking at me as they get used to using all those laminated devices for the first time, under the light of a lamp wrapped in plastic too, which reminds us at all times that anyone who we are in that clinic we can be contagious without knowing it. We don't know who we protect from whom. And that's when I remember poor ET