The Blog of Small Things

Little things make all the difference; this is a blog about the minutiae of life.

Friday, September 22, 2006

TEETH

They say a fool and his money are easily parted, but what about an anti-hero and his teeth?

I awoke this morning to the feeling of toothache in the furthest back top right tooth (if you see what I mean, I’m not doing a diagram). This was immediately followed by a sinking feeling in my stomach at the thought I may have to go to the dentist. Don’t get me wrong, I am not someone who is scared of the dentist, it just really annoys me that I have to go; I find it an irritating experience which induces a kind of torpor in me for the rest of the day. And I can’t stand the smell of those places.

Having said this, the last time I went to the dentist I was scared. My fear was because of the impending root canal work which was about to take place, combined with the knowledge that local aneasthetic has absolutely no effect on me, and that no matter how hard I tried to explain this to my dentist in my previous appointment, for some reason he just refused to believe me. In the end I became resolved to it and commented that I had given birth to my daughter a few months earlier with no pain relief, so if I could do that I could have root canal work without anaesthetic. The dentist looked at me and huffed in a patronising fashion “No” he said “This is much worse than childbirth; no one could go through this without pain relief.”
Oh.
I tried to explain to him again that the aneasthetic doesn’t appear to work on me, but he wasn’t having any of it and asked me to explain why it works on everyone else but not on me, what’s so special about me?! He took my inability to explain myself as a scientific oddity as proof that I was wrong. So, there I was, watching him polishing his drill whilst he waited for the anaesthetic to take effect on my mouth and, as I felt the cold feeling flirt with my lips and then decide to disappear, I felt scared.

It hurt. In fact it hurt rather a lot, for days, but the dentist (who was male) was completely incorrect about his comparison with childbirth. The root canal work was very painful, and I have to admit, “Marathon Man” did go through my head more than once during the experience, but at no time did I think my head was going to split in two, and I was very ‘present’ in my body at all times. As far as I am concerned, the word ‘pain’ is a completely inadequate word when it comes to having a baby but very accurately describes having a thirteen stone man taking out his aggression on your tusks via an enthusiastic electrical device.

Anyway, this doesn’t make me want to run back to my dentist for assistance now I have toothache, but the trouble is, I can’t just go elsewhere because I can’t afford to ‘go private’ and he is the only NHS dentist in a fifty mile radius. This means I will probably just hope it goes away, but will no doubt end up going to the dentist next year to be told I need to have root canal work done on that tooth because I left it so long!

When I was eighteen years old I had my wisdom teeth removed - all four of them, at once. Thankfully this dentist was very nice and seemed to understand that local anaesthetic has no effect on me, and removed them in an operating theatre under general anaesthetic (I was the one under general anaesthetic, not him). Only one of my wisdom teeth had actually come through, but the other three were threatening, so he said he might as well “whip them all out” while he was there. To do this he had to cut open my gums and pull them out from underneath. Before he did this though he had to get me to sign a consent form to say it was fine with me if things went wrong. I asked him what constituted “going wrong” and listened as, calm as you like, he explained there was a possibiility he would accidentally sever a nerve which would make one side of my face permanently look like I’d had a stroke. Marvellous. I asked him what the chances were of this happening and he said “Well, if you were my sister I wouldn’t let you go near that operating theatre.” He sensed my shock. “But it’ll probably be ok.” he said. For reasons I am unable to fathom to this day, I signed the form. Thankfully my face was ok, apart from the considerable bruising, swelling, inability to eat for a fortnight etc.., but all of this passed in time.

For many years my father had some sort of false teeth to replace the two middle ones on his bottom row, which had been knocked out at some point in an accident. I always remember one summer when we were on holiday in Devon and he got out of the swimming pool and smiled to reveal a large gap in his bottom row! He had lost his two faux-fangs at the bottom of the pool when he was swimming underwater. He quickly closed his mouth and dived back in to retrieve his gnashers. I think he has done rather well with his teeth actually, only acquiring a full set of false teeth in his 70’s. He has had some....um....teething problems (sorry!)...with these though. The bottom set in particular have caused him some irritation and became so loose it took him about an hour to eat a sandwich. A couple of weeks ago this situation became intolerable and he returned to the dentist who informed him they would have to ‘borrow’ his teeth in order to get them fixed. It would only be for a couple of days and they would call him when they were ready.

My mother refused to let him out of the house. A sociable man, my father was naturally perturbed by this and when I spoke to his gummy self on the phone, knowing I had seen him without his teeth in before he asked “It doesn’t look that bad does it?!!” Well, what was I supposed to say? I did manage to avoid saying the word ‘Steptoe’ though, and was quite pleased at my self-restraint. All that was keeping him going was the thought he would be released from his quarantine by the weekend, but then the bad news came; the teeth would not be ready until Monday morning. I received an email from my mother saying she was keeping him “out of the public eye” (like he’s Salman Rushdie or something) over the weekend. On the Monday I received a jubilent email, informing me he now had his teeth back and so was allowed to resume normal duties, which included taking the dog to the vet, which seemed to me a sadly inauspicious re-introduction to society, but there you are!

When I was a child my grandmother used to come and stay with us for a fortnight during the summer holidays. I used to stand and stare in fascination at the row of gum and teeth submerged in liquid in a glass on a shelf in the bathroom. I found it bizarre there was a ‘body part’ apparently existing in a different room whilst its owner slept in our spare bed.

I always find it surprising the lack of emotional attachment people seem to have to their false teeth. When my father was in hospital last year and was moved wards after surgery, we had some problems tracking down all of his possessions and, for about twenty-four hours his teeth had disappeared into the hospital Bermuda triangle. When we finally retrieved them, we couldn’t be 100% sure it was his teeth we had found, but no one appeared that bothered really, including my father. As long as they seemed to fit, everyone was happy. I found this incredible. Maybe I will change my opinion when the time comes for me to have false teeth fitted, but I cannot imagine even contemplating ‘trying’ a set of teeth to see if they were mine or not because, what if they’re not?! Added to which, where had they been during those twenty-four hours? They could have been anywhere, doing anything! Again, no one appeared bothered and everyone seemed happy as long as the teeth were just given a quite rinse under the tap.

Maybe I should take this as a lesson about my own teeth. I do my best to look after my teeth, flossing, brushing and mouthwashing twice a day, eating very little sugar and avoiding fizzy drinks, and there is a part of me which must be to do with my relative youth (!) that refuses to believe I will ever have false teeth, even though it seems it is just one of those things that happens to everyone some time after pensionable age. But then I remember the brace I had on my upper row of teeth when I was fourteen and what it felt like to put that in and take it out of my mouth. Whenever I see someone ‘put their teeth in’ it reminds me of that because the action is so similar. So, maybe, forty years hence I too will be sitting in a hospital bed being handed a set of teeth which have just been rinsed under the tap and will be quite happy to test them in my mouth to see if they are mine, and maybe I too will then look up at my daughter and beam at her in that way that people who have just put their teeth in do, sigh and grin and say “Ah, that’s better.”

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have remembered. All this links I have saw yet.

[url=http://altima-car0.mobchoise.com/amplifier-best-car.html]amplifier best car[/url]
http://altima-car0.mobchoise.com/amplifier-best-car.html
amplifier best car
[url=http://car-falcon-photo7.mobchoise.com/car-falcon-photo.html]car falcon photo[/url]
http://car-falcon-photo7.mobchoise.com/car-falcon-photo.html
car falcon photo
[url=http://budget-car-and-van-rental1.mobchoise.com/budget-car-car-code-coupon-rental-rental.html]budget car car code coupon rental rental[/url]
http://budget-car-and-van-rental1.mobchoise.com/budget-car-car-code-coupon-rental-rental.html
budget car car code coupon rental rental
[url=http://car-dodge-part-stratus4.mobchoise.com/car-dodge-part-stratus.html]car dodge part stratus[/url]
http://car-dodge-part-stratus4.mobchoise.com/car-dodge-part-stratus.html
car dodge part stratus
[url=http://honda-civic-car1.mobchoise.com/hotted-up-car.html]hotted up car[/url]
http://honda-civic-car1.mobchoise.com/hotted-up-car.html
hotted up car
[url=http://car-with-big-rim-pic8.mobchoise.com/car-with-the-most-miles-per-gallon.html]car with the most miles per gallon[/url]
http://car-with-big-rim-pic8.mobchoise.com/car-with-the-most-miles-per-gallon.html
car with the most miles per gallon
[url=http://car-part-tulsa0.mobchoise.com/car-part-tulsa.html]car part tulsa[/url]
http://car-part-tulsa0.mobchoise.com/car-part-tulsa.html
car part tulsa
[url=http://vintage-american-road-racing-car3.mobchoise.com/vip-style-car.html]vip style car[/url]
http://vintage-american-road-racing-car3.mobchoise.com/vip-style-car.html
vip style car
[url=http://enclosed-car-trailer-for-sale6.mobchoise.com/enclosed-car-trailer-for-sale.html]enclosed car trailer for sale[/url]
http://enclosed-car-trailer-for-sale6.mobchoise.com/enclosed-car-trailer-for-sale.html
enclosed car trailer for sale
[url=http://pixar-car-trailer7.mobchoise.com/pixar-car-trailer.html]pixar car trailer[/url]
http://pixar-car-trailer7.mobchoise.com/pixar-car-trailer.html
pixar car trailer

Some of it twice...

6:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

unlock iphone 4
unlock iphone 4
iphone 4 unlock

http://www.shatterbox.com/video/max-and-jason http://www.salesandmarketing.com/article/dancing-jaws-dragon
The virus makes the radio play and i don't do anything. What's happening?
how to unlock iphone 4 unlock iphone 4

unlock iphone 4 [url=http://unlockiphone44.com]unlock iphone 4[/url] unlock iphone 4 unlock iphone 4

9:48 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home