Not sure if I’ve had a chance to debrief after my dental appointment last week? Stop me if so…
The dentist is a lovely young lady, and her consulting room is small but perfectly formed, with not only all the modern equipment and a video screen on the roof, but also a large window looking out onto some nearby greenery. As well as taking xrays, she was also able to take photos of my teeth with some sort of fibreoptic camera. That meant when she talked about my teeth she could show me all the gruesome details on her computer screen. “See where this enormous old filling has worn away there? And where the tiny remaining fragment of tooth has a big crack right through it?” The upshot is that I’m going to have to have the entire filling removed and brand new and very expensive crown to replace it. I console myself that at least I don’t need a root canal. I dont know what that is, but it sounds bad.
My knowledge of dentistry is rudimentary at best, hardly more than a layperson. It’s embarrassing really. I only remember one lecture at medical school about dentistry. They had a visiting professor – well, the dental school was just down the road, so he didn’t have far to come. He started off by getting everyone in the lecture theatre – about 150 of us – to stand up. Then he said, sit down if you have eight or more fillings. Well, I sat down, because my mouth is a wasteland of amalgam. And I wasn’t the only one – but we were a rarity. Then, sit down if you have seven fillings. More people sat down. As he counted down, the majority of the class ended up seated. Finally, there were a handful of people who had no fillings, and from out of his bag he produced a collection of tubes of toothpaste, which he then threw out to those lucky few with perfect teeth (all the rich kids of the class, I noticed). How I burned with the injustice of it all. I had angry tears in my eyes and was ready to storm out, but luckily I was only 19 and I didn’t have the guts, so I stayed where I was. (Not that I remember anything else about the lecture). How was it my fault that I had so many fillings? They weren’t of any recent origin – they all dated back to my time in primary school, at the hands of the School Dental Nurse.
Our dental nurse was completely mad. Of course her room in its own little prefab was known as the murder house, but that was nothing unusual in those days. I think it’s unlikely that she enjoyed hurting children, so chances are she wasn’t a psychopath, but she did seem to spend most of her day angry and frustrated. She was full of whatever the opposite of the milk of human kindness is. She used to shout at us to “RELAX!” If we didn’t open our mouths wide enough, and would often slap our cheeks as an added incentive. No local anaesthetic, of course. She used to fill every tooth she saw on a whim. I tried to strike up some sort of rapport with her – my oldest brother was a violent bully* and that was my best defense against him, feeble though it was. Your know the sort of thing I mean? “Yes, you’re right, it’s all very unfair, just put the gun down and we can talk about it…” I remember one time having a conversation with her about sounds that were annoying. I suggested chalk squeaking on a blackboard, and she said the sound that fingernails make on nylon tights. I smiled and nodded, even though I actually had no idea what she was talking about. Even now I don’t know what that sound would be, although I know what nylons are. Could be an insight there into her troubled mind?
I mentioned my murder house experience to my dentist the other day, and she just said that, yes, there was a whole generation of New Zealanders out there that have mouths in much the same state as mine, because of how things were done back then. Could be worse I suppose. In my grandparents generation, people used to get all their teeth taken out as a 21st birthday present. And at least it was all free!
*he is much improved now, and weirdly is a terrific father.