Smudger Snippets: A Trip to the Dentist
Created | Updated Mar 21, 2010
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Dentist
My wife bought me one of those sonic tooth brushes for Christmas this year, and what a difference it compared to the cheaper one I had been using up and until then. It had three settings on it, high and low frequency and a massage setting, which really rattled my teeth and made them feel like you had just had a 'dentist' clean. Only thing is, I tended to use that massage setting quite a lot, and as a result managed to loosen a filling in one of my bottom back teeth! Actually, I don't really think it was the brush that caused it to loosen, it was more to do with a mint humbug that I had a few weeks earlier, as I felt it crack as I was crunching it.
Of course I never told my wife that I had broken my tooth while eating a sweet, and tried my best not to allow the pain to bother me, but it got to the stage when I just couldn't hide it any more, especially when she saw me flinch with pain one time, while brushing my teeth, as I accidentally hit the sore spot while brushing!
Since we moved down here some ten years ago now, we never registered with a dentist, as at the time it was almost impossible to register, due to a shortage of dentists in our area - we considered ourselves lucky to be able to register with the local doctor's surgery. I had taken our lad (my stepson) to that dentist surgery a few times when he was having a lot of dental work done, and I never thought to ask him if they were taking on new patients on the National Health Service, thinking the situation was still the same as before.
After suffering for a few more days I eventually built up the courage to phone the dentist surgery and ask if I could register with them, and was really surprised by their answer, they even asked if I could go in the following day to fill I the forms.
The reason behind my fear was from a really bad experience I had the last time I had any dental work done, and that was way back in 1969, yet the experience was so bad I have had a fear of them all this time.
It was during my basic training in the Navy and we were on the assault course for about the third time in as many weeks. They had a rule on this assault course that if any one failed to finish it within the 20 minutes allowed, or failed to finish it for any reason, the whole class had to go round it again. I had just come off the rope jump and was heading for the next obstacle, which was a row of telegraph poles about 20 feet long, fitted on wooden stilts which made them roughly three feet off the swamp below. The rule was you had to make your way along them but only using one pole, so a lot of blokes fell into the swamp, as they were covered in mud.
Just as I reached the top of the gully to climb up onto a pole, another bloke who had waited too long to let go the swing rope, landed right on my back pushing me forward on to the log face first, causing me to break a tooth in the process. I got back up, spat out a mouth full of blood, along with the section of tooth, and kept going, not wanting to be the one that made everyone go round it all again. I did manage to finish within the time limit, but my face was well swollen and bruised.
The pain really started to get really bad around ten o'clock that night, so I went up to the sick bay for some pain killers. The medic took one look at me, sat me down, and had a look inside my mouth. He said that I had a bad infection and that the tooth had to come out straight away, so he called out the duty dental officer, who was attending a function in the officer's mess at the time, and was none too pleased about being called out. He was still in his dress uniform with the silk waistband and a miniature medal was hanging from his dress uniform jacket.
He told that I wouldn't need an injection of anaesthetic as it would take too long before it took effect, and that he was in a hurry. He had a go at it with what looked like a pair of pointed nose pliers, bursting my bottom lip in the process, and I felt the blood running down my chin, but he only managed to break a bit from the tooth which I felt snap. He was using my bottom jaw and row of teeth as a levering point. After that failed, he told me that it needed loosening, so he started hitting it with a small chrome chisel and a hammer! It took 21 strikes exactly, as I counted every one of them, as the pain was just excruciating with each blow, I gripped the arm rests so tightly that my hands got so sweaty they slipped off.
The sweat also ran down my face and back, and it got worse with every blow, in fact at one point I almost passed out with the pain: it was only by concentrating on that miniature medal rocking back and forth on his tunic that I kept from doing so. It was after the 21st thump that I felt the tooth come out, and I could taste the blood as it filled my mouth. He told me to rinse my mouth, had a look at the hole in my gum, and then went over to the sink to wash his hands, then handed me a piece of gauze to plug the hole in my gum.
I just laid there in a state of shock, the whole top half of by body was wet with sweat and I am sure that I could still hear the thumps inside my head, even though I knew he had stopped. He left the room while still drying his hands, and I heard him talking to the medic in the other room, before I heard the outer close shut. I remember thinking, is that it, but I also glad that it was all over.
I looked at the clock on the wall, and realised that I had been in the chair for 20 minutes, just one minute less than the amount of thumps it took to break out that tooth. Those 20 minutes were the closest to hell that I had ever experienced in my life, and indeed, ever since. As I sat there holding a cloth at my mouth to catch the blood, the medic came through with two pain killers and a glass of water, saying that the dentist said I should take them before leaving.
The cold water seemed to go straight into the hole and caused even more pain, as I made my way to the door, fumbling for the packet of cigarettes I had in my uniform shirt pocket. I was still a bit unsteady on my feet, so when I got outside I sat on the step, and tried to light the damp cigarette I managed to get out of the packet, but it was too wet to light, in fact they were all wet with the sweat that had poured from me over the whole incident. My shirt was wet from my shoulders right down to my waist. The medic handed me one of his cigarettes, and steadied my shaking hand as I tried to light it.
The rest of that evening must have passed, but even to this day I can't remember what actually did happen, as it was all a haze to me. I woke up early the next morning in a daze, still feeling pain, and with not much memory of what happened the night before. One thing I do remember is that I couldn't eat normal food for the next week or so, and I had to drink soup that the bloke in the galley had to liquidise every meal time for me. I think it was about three or four days later before we had to do that assault course again, as we had to improve on our time every time we went round it. One thing is for sure, I took the time to check my back when I came off that rope swing again.
The whole experience has put me off from going to see a dentist ever since, in fact one of the questions on the form was 'when did you last see a dentist' and she was totally amazed when she saw 1969 on my form. Mind you she did say that my teeth were in quite good condition for a bloke my age.
Although this experience of having a tooth pulled was a lot better than my last one, I think it will be quite a long time before I go back to a dentist again.
