
Regular readers will know that like a fair proportion of the population , I am afraid of the dentist. Not my actual dentist per se, as she is super-model beautiful, softly spoken and blessed with a silken touch on her instruments.
I had a tooth out yesterday… no Tooth Fairy for me; mind you, I don’t really think she would have wanted this tooth, although I did not lose it through lack of care. I am extremely conscientious when it comes to looking after my teeth, precisely because I am so afraid of the dentist.
For years, though, this particular tooth has bothered me. I’ve tried all the sensitive toothpastes on the market, it’s had various fillings – even a root canal or something – I didn’t listen too much to the gory details about that…
My previous dentist dismissed my complaints of it not feeling right, too hot, as being perfectly normal, as it was a gold filling which does obviously retain heat. He reprimanded me for not flossing the area: “But it HURTS!” He replied: “No pain, no gain.” Yeah right.
Then, last year, I changed dentists. As a matter of course, on my first routine check up there, x-rays were taken, and when I went back to receive the results, I was horrified to find that the previous dentist had slapped a filling and root canal on top of an underlying abscess that was already present. The actual bone in my jaw was losing density… as my current dentist pointed out to me, showing me a cloudy grey blotch in a whole sea of blotches, that I eventually made out was my head. Eugh.
The tooth was granted a period of grace to see if it would somehow magically right itself. It didn’t. It throbbed and buzzed like a wasp in a bottle… it was the sort of thing that you would scratch until it bled if you could. So, yeserday, the tooth’s time was up.
Palms sweating, nervously clutching clear Fluorite (good for teeth) and Amber (natural analgesic) I lay back in the dentist’s chair as she tenderly rubbed the special numbing cream into my gum before injecting the anaesthetic. Lots of it. I am hyper-sensitive to pain, an actual recognised medical condition – I’m not just being a big wuss – and moments later, the tooth popped out as easily as an apple falling off a tree.
“It’s all over,” my lovely dentist soothed in dulcet tones , “just rinse and then you can go…”
I leapt to my feet and shot out, pausing only to mutter “’ank ‘oo!” and glance back disbelievingly at the sweaty outline I left behind on her pristine dentist’s chair. I suppose that’s one less tooth to worry about in the future, and to be honest, I’m glad it’s gone, rather like when the annoying neighbour whose car alarm goes off all the time at 4.00 a.m. moves away…
And I leave you with this cautionary tale from the poet Pam Ayres that my father found amusing… and I, quite frankly, find terrifying…
Fluorite and Amber… very useful for dentist trips…