If you need a decent advertisement for reducing your consumption of sugar, then it’s me. Not now – I’ve long accepted the medical evidence that sugar is not good for you and is actually the complete opposite – but when I was younger. I was from the Ribena and sugar on everything generation. At a guesstimate, I would say that I have had something in the region of four times as many fillings as I have teeth.
I say all this because once again I have made a special appointment to meet with my closest friend, the dentist, who I know better than almost anyone, thanks to the frequency with which I see him. This time, it’s yet another crumbling filling which left me with a mouthful of shrapnel one evening and and increasingly larger cavity in one of the my back teeth. It has go so bad I can fit my entire tongue in it. Well, that’s what it feels like.
It is a tooth that has been root canal filled so today’s treatment should be anaesthetic free, which is something, although I do have the nagging feeling that the reason the tooth fell apart was because of a dental abscess. I have two of these before and believe me I would not wish the pain on anyone, except perhaps some of the most loathsome political figures and journalism in history.
I detest the very existence of the private medical health system but in the case of my teeth I cannot afford NHS treatment. I have so many things go wrong, I doubt that my modest income could cope with the cost of NHS treatment.
It is far too late for me but I hope that sometime soon the scientists can come up with painless methods of dental care. Not that it’s agony, unless you have root canal treatment when it bloody well is agony, but I can’t stand the lop-sided speech methods you have to employ after having a mouth full of anaesthetic.
In short, these are the things I don’t like about the dentist:
– The injection to numb the pain (Owwww!).
– The drill.
– The slower drill.
– When the dentist says, “Mmm” and shakes his head.
– Rinsing your mouth at the end of treatment and seeing the liquid dribble down your cheek and mouth, all in the presence of a pretty young dental assistant who you are trying to impress (this applied more when I was nearer her age, to be fair).
– Seeing the receptionist when you can barely speak but need to arrange a new appointment.
– Running into someone you know when your mouth is still full of anaesthetic. (“Have you got Bell’s Palsy?” I was once asked.)
At least I know what to expect, I don’t need to be shown to the surgery and sometimes I am so confident I feel like I can tell the dentist which tools he will need today.
There are a million things I would rather do today than this, I can tell you.
