As I explained in an update to my original comment, the offer to use the tuning fork came only after an extensive manual exam with range of motion and "does it

As I explained in an update to my original comment, the offer to use the tuning fork came only after an extensive manual exam with range of motion and "does it hurt" tests. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear at first, it was 10 years ago. I don't see what harm the tuning fork would have caused me beyond a moment of pain which would show that it was worth my time to get an X-ray. Feeling a bit of pain is not the worst thing in the world. One time I had a tiny cavity on a lower molar, and my dentist offered to drill and fill it without anesthetic. He said that of course I was welcome to get a shot or two of novocaine as we'd normally done. But the lower jaw takes so much time to recover, and he'd had a small cavity of his own filled without novocaine and it was nice to be immediately back to normal. He also knew that I was fairly tolerant to pain and he probably wouldn't have made the suggestion otherwise. So I took him up on it, and sure enough, it really hurt for a few seconds. But I had a completely normal mouth when I left the office. None of the usual drooling and tongue biting for the rest of the day. I went right out for a nice lunch! So that was another tradeoff I was glad for, and hopefully these decisions are mine to make.