Sogger’s Blog

You may have followed the ongoing saga that is the reparation of my shot pre-molars (shamelessly self-referenced here). About a month ago I started to get pain again in a tooth that had supposedly been deadened - how could this be? Was my trust in dentist 2 misplaced? No messing around, this time I called the dentist straight away only to be told that he was on holiday for the next 3 weeks (don’t you just love long French holidays?). So again, a long wait, whinging to anybody willing to listen (nobody in fact). But a date was at least fixed. Eating in the meantime was a painful experience; food seemed to get trapped everywhere and my favourite, steak and chips, was off the menu.

“Steak and Chips”, the combo long championed in player profiles in Shoot magazine (a football magazine for pre-adolescents rather than a lowbrow gay porn magazine. Although having said that, A picture of Kevin Keegan on the front page in his 80’s footballer shorts might lead to some confusion). The player profiles were always the same: same questions, same answers. “So, Mister Beattie, what is your favourite food?”, “Steak and chips”. “Who was the biggest influence on your career?”, “My Dad”, and other such insights. I am reminded of the Kevin Keegan cover, not because it roused some long-repressed adolescent angst, but because I still have this issue (of the magazine, not one related to Kevin-Keegan-in tight-shorts-causing-issues-with-my-sexuality). It is the seminal (don’t confuse the meaning of this word either) issue where my question was published in the “Ask The Expert” section.

Soggers from Cumbria asks,

“Dear Sir, please can you tell me how Sheffield Wednesday came to get their rather unusual name?”.

Incidentally, my question was, “Please can you tell me how Sheffield Wednesday got their name?”. They probably added the “Dear Sir” and “rather unusual” to make me sound like less of an illiterate working-class northerner, son of a coal miner etc. Anyway, you can go find out the answer for yourself - if you can’t be bothered to “Ask the Expert” yourself, why should I help you?

Back to the dentist…

Funnily enough, I hadn’t seen the dentist from scoop 1 since that day, even though his surgery/butcher’s slab was only a few hundred metres from my house - I tended to keep my head down as we passed in the car, or look the other way in case he came out and harangued me about unpaid bills. The morning of scoop 5, I had to walk to the bus-stop which took me past his surgery, and as I did so, he appeared on the doorstep (sad to say, not with a blood-covered cloak and a dripping scalpel). He saw me. He didn’t say anything, just turned on his heels and disappeared inside. This could either mean that he was embarrassed or was off to find his blunderbuss (if you remember the description of his antique surgery you may know what this is. Alright, so it’s a big gun). Anyway, I was glad to see that he didn’t accost me directly and wasn’t going to wait around to see if he was going to run me through with a rusty drill-bit.

A bus and a tram ride, and 1-hour later (I really went to great physical lengths to get away from the original dentist), I was back in the chair from scoops 2, 3 and 4. A quick description of the symptoms and a quick look in my mouth and the dentist was able to tell me the problem: part of the tooth he recently deadened had broken off, leaving a hole into which food would be trapped, causing irritation of the gums which was in fact the cause of the pain. So in he went. Again.

Wriggling about inside with some shiny white equipment he was able to fix the damage quickly. All very neat and professional. However, just as I made to stand up, he said, “Hhhmmm, a lot of tartar in there, I think we’ll get rid of that”. I’ve never had this done before, which probably accounts for the ensuing pain as he fought to chip the stuff off the back of my teeth. It was probably the worse moment of all the work I had done. At any moment, I felt that he was going to touch a nerve ending and cause my feet to touch my nose as they shot involuntarily into the air and my head did likewise.

But hey, what a difference! I could actually feel that I have individual teeth, not just a silver and yellow strip that makes it look like I have a small, over-ripe banana skin behind my lips. That was 1 week ago, and touch wood everything is OK. No reaction so far, so hopefully Scoop 6 will be the Unstarted Symphony.

I know that I promised that scoop 5 would be the end of any description on my oral tribulations (don’t get me back onto Kevin Keegan), but this time, I promise it is the case.

Like my teeth, the follow-up to Scoop 1 has been difficult to get out. However, for your delectation, here, finally, is the sequel.

As I said previously, I was kindly invited back for further investigations, having gone away from the first visit with a temporary filling, which “would hurt, but in a different way”, designed to disinfect the site ready for the real work to start. With the filling removed, scoop 2 began. Very kindly, the dentist decided to use anaesthetic for this one. However, he seemed to inject it everywhere in my mouth apart from the dig-site. For several days afterwards my gums were scarred and I am pretty sure they were burnt by this anaesthetic.

During this investigation, he decided that the nerves were beyond repair and that it would need “at least” 3 more sessions in order to deaden them. “After that, we’ll talk about your wisdom teeth”. “I’ve put in another temporary filling - I can’t understand why the first one didn’t work”.

However, he very kindly filled the second tooth for me in the meantime. It was only the day after that I realised the filling was not at all adapted to the shape of my mouth and that, when I closed my mouth on one side, on the other side the teeth were not closing - I looked like Popeye; all I needed was a pipe to hang out of this side (and infeasibly large muscles in my arms) and the effect would be complete. Unlike the cartoon violence meted out by Popeye, this situation led to extreme headaches because the muscles on one side of my face were constantly tensed while those on the other side hung loose . Not pleasant.

“OK, let’s give this one a chance to work - come back next week and we’ll carry on”.

Now, I may be a coward, but I knew full well that it would be folly to keep coming - of course, I was never going to tell him to his face. Oh no, run away and hope he doesn’t notice. So, it was with a feeling of guilt that I rang him just before the 3rd appointment and told him that I had been delayed overnight on a customer site and would call him when I got back. I then called the dentist where we used to live and who is treating my son. The thing is, they are very popular, so it was another 10-day wait for an appointment, and only then because they gave me preferential treatment - they have already taken 700€ from us for his brace, with the certainty that his story is not finished and my other son will soon need the same treatment. Mouths - who needs them? The phrase “put your money where your mouth is” never rung truer.

Anyway, onto scoop 3…

Entering the surgery here literally made my jaw drop (but, for obvious reasons, only on one side). Everything was clean, new and white. The dentist had an assistant who held the apparatus for him - I didn’t have to do it myself! I didn’t have to expectorate (great word) from a paper cup into a dry-spit-covered off-white basin - they had a machine to do this too. I had couched the visit as needing a “second opinion” on the original work. The dentist was very diplomatic, but could only express disbelief at the fact that the filling was convex, thus preventing my mouth from closing properly. He had a tiny X-ray machine. A click of the button, a swivel of the head and he could see the results immediately on his iMac screen. These results showed that there was no obvious nerve damage and that a simple filling would suffice. “I will fill it with a white composite” he said, quickly correcting himself, “Well, not white, but matching the colour of the surrounding teeth”. Gggrrrr.

So this time he corrected the damage from the filling from scoop 2, gave me another (well-fitting) temporary filling and asked me to wait another week to make sure that there was really no nerve damage before coming back to have the other filling. “And then we can talk about your wisdom teeth…” was the now familiar parting line.

Scoop 4 is a happier tale. I arrive and am led to their X-ray room where they take a full mouth X-ray with a lovely new machine that swivels around your head, takes 2 seconds and flashes the results up immediately on the computer screen. A quick filling and the bill is presented - 64€ for 2 sessions which included 3 X-rays and 2 fillings, all of which is reimbursed by the dramatically over-stretched health service. Funnily enough, I still haven’t received any word from the original dentist. My guess is that it will come to more than 64€ though.

Anyway, to finish, a few words on my wisdom teeth. It turns out that, like a drunk driver in a crowded shopping street, they have veered uncontrollably to the right, crashing through the crowd of orderly normal teeth, causing them to scatter in panic. This has had the effect of squashing them together so that the poor tooth in the middle has been isolated. Imagine a police line-up: the victim selects the suspect and he is asked to step forward while the others take a step backwards- that is what my poor centre tooth on the bottom must be going through right now. Unfortunately, the wisdom teeth have defended themselves by wrapping themselves around nerves. “We can take them out, but if we make a mistake you will end up spending the rest of your life with no feeling on one side of your face…”. I think I’ll put that decision off until after Christmas.

Unfortunately, the story itself, like the blood from my gums, will run and run, but, from now on, I will spare you from the gory details.

This post relates to my first experience of French dentistry. Prepare to wince (if you don’t, I have failed in my goal). It is a long, ongoing story, so I split it into a few parts in order to stop you getting too bored and speed-reading to the bottom to see if there is anything interesting.

Anyway, to get underway, I should say that, like the French medical service, I assumed that French dentists would be of a high quality, with immediate availability - kind of like a high class call-girl (I would imagine).

As we have just moved house (did I already mention that ), I didn’t have any recommendations, so chose the one closest to our house (one dentist is pretty much like another, no?). First surprise: a 2 week wait for an appointment. So, as a proper man, I had spent several months moaning to my wife about the excruciating pain, and, like a proper Englishman, I waited several months before doing anything about it. OK, 2 more weeks, but the wheels were in motion.

Come the big day, I headed off down to the surgery. The signs were good: the surgery was in the courtyard of a beautiful bourgeois house; the waiting room was full of antiques; basically, it was not like any dentists I had ever visited before. Also, unlike any I have ever visited, I was welcomed at the door by the dentist himself - an austere man befitting of his surgery’s waiting room, obviously close to retirement, but seemingly steady of hand with a pleasant manner and obviously lots of experience - I should have seen it coming…

I never asked myself, “where is the receptionist? Where is the dental assistant? How much is this going to cost?” as I was waved straight into the surgery. Second surprise: the surgery was also full of antiques, starting with the chair that he beckoned me to sit in. Think imitation beige leather, worn out and patched together with cellotape and you get the idea. OK, it’s just a chair - he had comforting high-tech gadgets after all. Look at that Sony monitor in the corner - no idea what it does, but at least it’s beige. It looked like one of the oscilloscopes we used at university 20 years ago - actually, maybe not so comforting…

So, napkin on, and in he goes. “Where does it hurt?”. Strangely, that day, it didn’t hurt at all. He soon fixed that though. With something too closely resembling a fish-hook, he pulled and pushed my teeth in the general area where I said it hurt. Soon enough he found the problem, and like a dodgy garage mechanic (aren’t they all?), he gave a sharp intake of breath and told me that I had 2 cavities, both below the gum, one of which had dug a secret passage from one tooth to another. Of course, the problem was down to the previous dentist who had badly filled the teeth.

So he decided to have a closer look. He went off to get his drill bit from one of his antique cupboards, uttering, “Hhhmm, I only seem to have one left but that’ll do”. He didn’t want to use anaesthetic, so in he went, asking me to raise my hand if it hurt. It was OK for a bit, but sure enough he got far enough down to hit the nerve causing my hand to raise, but not under any control. “Hhhmm, even worse than I thought. It’ll need at least another four sessions. I’ll have to deaden the nerve, do this, do that…come back tomorrow”.

At this point, the alarm bells and my gums were ringing. No price (”we’ll discuss that at the end of the consultation”), no details, no waiting list - this was the big one; the one that would pay for the new tyres on his Jaguar. Still, as the good Englishman, I didn’t dare to kick up a fuss and agreed to come back in tomorrow, which was incidentally a Saturday.

I’ll tell you next time about anaesthetic that left my gums burnt, deeper digging (with non-functioning anaesthetic that was obviously past its sell-by date), a filling on the other tooth that left me unable to get my teeth to close on one side of my mouth causing headaches and a final realisation that I needed to see a real dentist…