Something to chew upon
For good or ill, I visit my dentist about every six months for a check-up – and then possibly a further appointment to deal with anything discovered during said check-up that might warrant attention.
My attitude to teeth and dentistry is somewhat ambivalent.
About three decades ago one dentist I visited off Shaftesbury Avenue in London told me matter-of-factly that during an appointment that, via evolution or whatever other factors, human teeth were only designed to last a maximum of forty-five years anyway. The news gave me some comfort in the sense that – though over the years, through playing sport and possibly poor diet and/or neglectful teeth-brushing – a fair few of mine had either fallen by the wayside and/or now sported fillings of various colours, minerals, textures and unsightliness, at least I still possessed some originals.
Unlike some great men from history, step forward Exhibit A George Washington, whose complete set of wooden false teeth is an exhibit is some museum or another to this day.
Furthermore, a while back I read somewhere that the reason why so few people who were painted from life in the years between 1000 and 1900 AD were smiling in their portraits was for fear of revealing that they had only about two to three teeth max to boast about.
Still, if I was King Charles II about to dive onto the royal mattress with Nell Gwynne, I suppose the fact that I’d be locking faces and playing tonsil-tennis with someone whose mouth possessed little more than a set of gums, the revulsion this might induce in me would only be about equivalent to that Nell would be feeling at the similar prospect she’d be confronting. What’s sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, if you see what I mean.
This half-yearly dental ritual of mine had begun about ten days ago, when I went for my check-up.
The new dentist I saw – a foreigner, probably just the sort of member of an EU country who would now be very concerned about Brexit – looked about twelve years of age. Within fifteen minutes he had told me that I needed not only to see the hygienist but also to return to see him for the application of a new filling (“it’s a small one at this stage, but – and it’s your decision – we could do it now if you want … rather than wait another six months, by which time it will be a bigger job to do” etc.). Would I please now leave, pay my bill, and book an appointment for both the hygienist and the filling to be done.
Hence my return to the scene of the crime yesterday.
First I saw the hygienist for a session.
I’d never seen a hygienist before (in a work situation, if you see what I mean, for all I know I may have seen many walking about over the years in the high street without knowing this was their profession) and she had never seen me before, so this was a novel situation for both of us.
Did I floss or do anything similar (beyond brushing my teeth) as regards hygiene, she asked.
No.
The chair I was sitting in was reclined backwards and some mechanical arm with a light on it manoeuvred, the better for the lady to get access to – and see – what she was looking for.
I have a reasonably high pain threshold, so I have never had any psychological issue with visiting dental surgeries – well, except as a small boy, when my mother used to take us to a seaside town’s local dentist, an angular-looking spinster who allegedly played hockey and gave us ‘gas’ before systematically attacking us with a sadist zeal. Both back in those days, and now, I feel that – far from allowed to practice as a dentist – she should have been a convicted felon kept behind bars in Holloway.
My hygiene session lasted less than twenty minutes. It was an ordeal made slightly more bizarre (and I must admit pleasant) by the fact that, at the angle I was reclining, the position of my mouth and the position of the hygienist in tending to me, I was conscious throughout of first her left … and then her right … fleshy bosom being gently pressed against the side of my face and she moved between dealing with one side of my mouth and then the other.
As I later settled her £30 bill at the Reception desk, I consoled myself with the reflection that this was probably money well spent in my case, never mind any hygiene benefits.
After a five minute sojourn in the waiting area nursing an eight month old copy of Country Life, I was then summoned for my filling appointment on the other side of the building.
First I had as jab to numb the area and then, after a brief examination of my mouth, the dentist announced that although today’s purpose was indeed a small operation, he had now decided to remove the entirety of the filling that was already dominating the offending tooth and effectively ‘begin again’ i.e. rather than just add a supplementary, as originally decided and agreed.
I suppose this development went some way to explain why I departed – with a next ‘check-up/hygienist’ appointment scheduled for January 2012 – another £160 lighter than I had arrived.
