Get your choppers round this - two visits to the dentist.

Well we all use our teeth to eat and recently I reluctantly took myself and my gnashers along to the local dentist after suffering with my back teeth. Eating or drinking anything hot or cold would set a tooth off and send pains up the side of my face. Believe me I didn't want to go. Then who does huh? In the last couple of weeks I've been twice and spent (sobs as types) nearly £200 on dentistry. No wonder I've not been to the dentist since 2002. Part fear of dental treatment part cost.

blogger in pain.



The first time I entered the modern clinical space of my local village dentist I had the tooth extracted and nervously explained to the young dentist and the dental nurse about my fear of dentistry in particular the dentist probing and prodding (with the metal scraper thingy) around sensitive teeth. Another fear was of the needle going in my gum to freeze up the area for the extraction to take place without me screaming the place down. He was very understanding and once the clamps were around my thrashing legs and arms and my head held rock solid tight in the female dental nurse's strong hands I was fine. Nothing like a bit of bondage to reassure the nervous patient. The sentence that began 'he was very understanding...' was slightly exaggerated. He was actually very understanding and the reality was that I lay in the dentists chair being very well looked after and every step was explained to me as he did his job. The crunching sensation as he extracted the tooth was pretty weird though. All passed off without me rushing out of the surgery with a trail of slow motion blood issuing from my ravaged mouth. He suggested I come back another time and have the next tooth along filled as it would soon be in the same situation as the one just extracted. I nodded my consent and went to pay the bill. Ouch!

Yesterday morning I returned to have the filling done (£93) and sat in a somewhat serious mood waiting to be called in for the filling to be sorted. Not keen on drills - dental or otherwise. I bet as you read that the thin wine of the dental drill passed through your mind and thoughts of graphic dental torture scenes from the film The Marathon Man weren't far behind.

After a liberal dose of injection (had to do it twice as my tooth was still feeling sensitive to the drilling) the dentist got on with drilling the former filling out of the tooth. That was with the fine drill. The dental nurse sucked out the moisture and metal bits floating around my open mouth. Then came a very odd sensation of a bigger wider drill grinding at the cavity in a slower circular movement. It didn't hurt  - I could just feel the movement. The dentist said he just had to remove the decay and then he packed the tooth with the new filling substance. Towards the end I had to grind my back teeth and this proved quite difficult with the right hand side of my face frozen up. My hands also felt very sweaty with tension and I had the bizarre sensation of wanting to giggle. In the old days of the dentist using gas this urge to giggle was a common reaction when coming round or going under but my reaction was more of relief I guess.

Because so much anaesthetic had been used in my gum to dull the area I couldn't really eat or drink anything for the four hours it took to wear off. Later on I made myself a lovely smoked bacon wrapped chicken dinner as a treat. Enough dentistry already!

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