On the rare occasions the offspring are in the car with me when I fuel up I buy them tic-tacs. They call them tic-tacs but are in fact mentos. These guys:
A couple of weeks ago I had bought some and was merrily distributing them. I popped one in my mouth and bit down. I heard the crack before I felt it. The sound was unmistakable. One of my teeth cracked in half upon impact. It was mildly uncomfortable and I knew it must have been a tooth I'd had treated for root canal because otherwise I'd probably gone through the ceiling in agony. I was a wee bit worried as it was one of my teeth close to the front but I figured it was easily repairable.
An hour later it was aching a fair bit and I knew I needed a dentist. Except it was Sunday. Gritting my remaining teeth I phoned and made an appointment to see an emergency dentist. They kindly fitted me in. Apparently "cracked tooth" are magic words in dentist land.
When I arrived the dentist who couldn't have been more than twelve and spoke very little English asked me if I was in agony.
I explained I had some discomfort and she nodded sympathetically.
She proceeded to inject what must have been a fairly solid dose of pain relief into my gum.
She then announced she was going to extract my whole tooth.
That's when the begging began. I had images in my mind of looking like this....
I explained to her there was NO WAY she was taking my whole tooth. She could remove the cracked part but not the whole thing.
Dentist: "Now please calm down Sarah. We need to extract all the tooth" (this said while waving a large and ominous looking instrument)
Me: "No! No! No! It's my smile tooth. I need it for my smile." (wriggling as far away as I could from her)
Dentist: "It's cracked. We need to remove it all."
Me: "No! No! No! It's my smile tooth."
and so on.
In my defence I think the narcotics injected in my mouth made it hard for me to articulate my position clearly. The best I could come up with was "smile tooth." Yeah, great command of the English vocabulary there.
In the end, she somewhat sulkily agreed to just remove the cracked part of my tooth which was hidden from public view. She then followed up with dire warnings about how I NEEDED my whole tooth extracted really and that she would charge me for a separate extraction when I returned with my tail, or more accurately, my tooth between my legs later in the week.
I left there $300 poorer and with the cracked tooth neatly sealed in a bag. My kids wanted to show it for their news.
The next day I made an appointment to see MY regular dentist. He is a delightful man named Colin Dempsey. I am unashamedly declaring his name on my blog because a) he is fantastic and b) he saved my tooth.
I explained my situation to him and how the other dentist had callously tried to ruin my smile. I begged him to save the remainder of my tooth.
And he did.
I have a filling the size of Texas but I still have my smile tooth. Something like this...
I need to collect a hundred thousand signatures apparently to get him nominated for Nobel Prize. So I'm starting here with my blog. Humble beginnings, but it's a start.
And the other dentist? Definitely not getting a Christmas card from me this year.
Do you like your dentist or do you avoid them as much as possible?
