Get Your Teeth Into This

 

Many of us have reached the stage when we are ‘long in the tooth‘- I  guess it refers to the fact that as we grow older, our gums recede thereby giving the impression of our teeth lengthening. Spoiler alert: there are likely to be more such idioms to follow as we explore my dental history and experiences.                                                           

 Members of our family started out at a dental disadvantage, inheriting a genetic tendency towards poor teeth and coming from an area with peat water – being acidic this can promote caries. ☹

We talk about giving our eye-teeth to obtain/achieve something close to our hearts. Well, I lost mine to a Campbeltown dentist who, since my jaw was too small to accommodate them, decided to gouge them out before they had properly come through the gums. Clearly hygiene wasn’t what it should have been and the two healthy front teeth developed abscesses and had to come out. A dental plate was made to replace them - on my 18^th birthday. I will never forget the horrors of all that! :o

Years later my molars began to give out – apparently deep drilling had weakened them. I often wonder if things would have been different had I gone less frequently for ‘treatment’. :(

 So I ended up in the chair of a private practitioner who was also Professor of Dentistry at the local university in Thessaloniki. I suspect I was a guinea pig for relatively new techniques. One memory was coming out of my hour-long session with four newly placed posts and his surgical coat looking like that of a butcher – my blood!                                                     

A little while later I was briefly in London and met up with a secretary we used to have in the British Council, Kuwait.  She had a great sense of humour and was a great fund of jokes to the extent that sometimes we had to avoid phoning each other’s office to avoid gales of laughter in the workplace!  As you can imagine, we had loads to talk about and the time flew by. As we headed off to our respective taxis, I suddenly remembered I had to tell her something newsworthy. I indicated my jaw as I called over, ‘I’ve just had implants put in’.  In response, she opened her coat, arched her back, posing proudly with a mischievous smile to say, ‘So have I!’  The cabbies’ faces were a picture!

But I digress: back to the dentist’s chair. The implant procedure itself, given plenty of anesthesia, is painless but it is nerve-wracking to hear your jawbone being drilled into.  Temporary caps are placed on top of the posts and you wait for gums to heal and posts to take. Lots of impressions, measurements, bite checks are taken/done to ensure that the final substitutes will be comfortable and look natural. We even got to the point of choosing the appropriate shade from a Dulux-type colour card!                                                 

I’m going to end this by recounting one of my worst experiences in The Chair. Once, while taking an impression of my lower jaw, my dentist got chatting to me. When the time came to remove the putty-filled tray, the dratted thing wouldn’t budge! She pulled and hauled - and you know it feels as if your entire jaw will be dislodged - but to no avail. :o                                               

Now I am claustrophobic and the thought that this plastic container full of hardened alginate was firmly embedded in my mouth was terrifying. Amid sounds of gasping and gulping, (mine!) she had to drill to break the tray and remove it piece by piece She did give me a day or two respite but we had to repeat the impression-taking again.  Double gasp and gulp!!