When I was little my dad was very invested in ensuring I had clean, strong, healthy teeth. His approach was both practical and literary. In addition to diligently brushing my infant choppers until I was old enough to do it myself, at bed-time he regularly read to me the Pam Ayres poem “Oh, I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth”. (Definitely a two birds with one stone situation - the bed-time poetry readings were a much-loved ritual, the repertoire ranging from Spike Milligan’s “Silly Old Baboon” to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot”.)
Despite this excellent introduction to dental hygiene, my teeth are not in fantastic condition at 40, but it’s NOT MY FAULT (or Dad’s). My dentist tells me I have poor quality enamel… I was born this way. It's possible that my long-lasting chocolate love affair hasn’t helped, but let’s not go there.
Consequently I’ve had a range of dental “work” ranging from relatively innocuous fissure seals all the way to root canal, with three in-the-chair wisdom tooth extractions along the way.
You’d think with so much experience I’d be fairly immune to dentist visits by now. Not so. The only positive is that I have had so many tooth “restorations” now that I am familiar with the various steps involved… so at least I know roughly how much longer there is to go.
It’s not the drill that worries me – once the needle’s been done any pain that does seep through is sufficiently dull. It’s all that… stuff in my mouth. The plasticky x-ray thing that always feels like it’s millimetres away from triggering my gag reflex; the cotton wool (I’m very sensitive to textures even in things that are meant to go in one’s mouth. Legumes, for example, are too mushy); the funny metal clampy thing that isolates the offending tooth like some kind of medieval torture instrument; the way things are sprayed in and suctioned out of one’s mouth simultaneously (why bother?); the way the suction doesn’t even seem to work – I always need to swallow anyway; the post-surgery numbness that makes my mouth feel far too large to fit in my face... like some kind of oral tardis.
The only thing that gets me in the chair in the first place is the fear of what might develop if I leave things to fester. After all, as Pam Ayres points out, a set of false teeth is not an attractive proposition.