DENTISSIMO!

Ah, how often in the past six months has this bit of nonsense been scheduled for publishing only for me to hold it back or replace it with something more current or perhaps less dreary...? Far too many times. In fact, as the months drift by, the sign off becomes less and less relevant (or perhaps more and more - it’s funny stuff, time...) as the possibility of that very next appointment starts to appear upon the less-than-distant horizon. So, you may very well ask, why bother sharing it with us now? Why not wait until that next appointment and have something topical, if out of time, in the bag? A shrewd point, faithful reader, but it’s never wise to tempt fate, is it...?


One of my recent days started with a return visit to the dentists to complete the process begun with my check-up seven weeks earlier. Once upon a time, if it became obvious that my general oral healthcare had been lacking, and the various packets of sweeties that had comforted me through my long lonely working days had started to burrow into the enamel, I would immediately be injected, numbed and drilled, and would head off to face the rest of my day with a slightly lop-sided grin, but the job well done.

Nowadays such a discovery requires a return visit for a “longer appointment” which these days can mean the better part of two months to worry about the impending drill (I try to be brave, I really do, but the smell of burning tooth still brings a tear to the eye…) and more time off needing to be taken. I do wonder quite how much further rotting occurs between these two appointments, but I suppose they know what they are doing.

Naturally, after weeks of behaving themselves, what’s left of my gums chose that very same morning that the appointment was booked for to decide to pour blood like there was a vampire’s convention in town, which would mean the inevitable lecture later about my lack of toothbrushing skills. Strangely, for a skill I allegedly acquired when I was still an ankle-biter, I never seem to have managed to become all that adept at it, which is probably because of my basic lack of patience with all matters mundane. Sadly, of course, I’m now beginning to pay the price for my sloppiness, but the dark spectre of the prospect of plastic teeth grinning at me from within a glass of water does tend to keep my persisting, however poorly.

Unless, perhaps, I subjected my molars to a slightly more vigorous brushing than is usual in anticipation of their inspection by a professional and so my gums wondered what was going on and decided to register their protestations. Recently they have been subjected to daily attacks from the exciting new electric device that currently burnishes my biters, but it still doesn’t really seem to have improved matters, even in conjuction with the “hummingbird” gizmo and the sloshing of the foul tasting brew that is “Corsodyl”.

Anyway, I arrived once again horrifically early at the ancient yet familiar house of dentristry which I have attended for all my life, because of a dark memory of horrendous traffic jams meaning that once I had to run the last three miles to make it there on time. Even now, the same familiar shudder goes through me every time I approach that unchanging doorway concealing potential agonies beyond it. I wonder what the always glamorous and always terribly youthful receptionists make of me as I greet them in my usual surly and slightly petrified manner.

Other, far more confident seeming patients seem to wander up and greet them with just the kind of jovial bonhomie that I fail to muster myself, and I wonder whether I really am a little strange, or just a more nervous type before the deed is done. Afterwards, when cheques are being written and future appointments made, I can be positively chipper and ebullient, but beforehand I feel I come across as a fellow best avoided, who gets glanced at with suspicion as I sit and fret my way through the long minutes of anticipation of oncoming pain.

Perhaps it is also because arrival is now complicated more by having forms to fill in, the sort of thing that really never used to happen, and I am always irritated by paperwork, and my irritation with it quite possibly irritates those receptionists who are, after all, just doing their jobs, and I suppose I should really be glad of the distraction, but somehow I’m just not.

Once summoned in, I’m settled down in the big chair and greeted like an old friend, even though I’m never sure I’d recognise my dentist if I met her on the street because she’s always got that mask over her mouth. We exchange the usual pleasantries and then there’s the usual seering pain as the injection goes in. Sometimes I think the “jab” might possibly hurt more than the filling would. It certainly brought tears to my eyes this time, but seeing as it took seven lots of the fixative her assistant was mixing to fill the thing, perhaps not. Mind you, it didn’t half hurt later once the anaesthetic did start to wear off, but I guess that’s any invasive procedure for you.

My dentist does seem to have become almost evangelically obsessed with “flossing” in recent years. I suspect she watches far too much American TV. In fact it’s become something of a mantra, which is very odd because such things were never mentioned during the years when my teeth were solid enough for sustained bouts of ankle-biting, for which they paid the ultimate price of falling out to be replaced by a more “adult” set which were immediately under sugary attack thanks to contributions gratefully received from the “tooth fairy” (who, in our house, seemed woefully underfunded, but he did his best…). It’s either “flossing” she wishes me to do or else she’s banging on about the use of “interdental brushes”, another costly device that they’ve dreamt up to force me into inflicting pain upon myself. Somehow I tend to find that few of these devices can actually be successfully crammed between my own set of gnashers without me fearing that I’m actually going to pop one of them out because of the effort.

Oh well, never mind. Every time I promise solemnly that I will try harder to attempt these things and then go away and fail to. I’m sure I will pay the price one day, but for the moment I cross my fingers, scrub away like I always do, and hope for the best. Perhaps  if I listened to her a bit more, I wouldn’t keep having to have these wretched fillings.

Anyway, the deed is done and I have headed off with a clean bill of dental health and a nagging ache in my jaw and a promise to avoid hot drinks for a few hours and to only chew my food on the opposite side for a while. The same old routine of jolly banter going back all those many years, and which will hopefully continue for some time to come yet. Roll on the next six monthly visit.