A life-time of dentistry

I went to the dentist on Tuesday.  I go every 6 months or so and I usually get away with an admonishment that I’m not flossing enough then it’s a quick burst of tooth and gum valeting and I’m out with a bill still in two digits. But this time was different. I was in for a filling and it cost £150. Would you credit it?

I’ve been going to dentists for a long time and my early experiences were not exactly joyful. I remember visiting a Mr Heap in Chester. I’m sure he didn’t get pleasure from the pain he inflicted but that’s what he did. Fair does he didn’t have the sharpest of needles, did they re-use them in those days, his drill was powered through some sort of string and pulley arrangement and, of course, fillings were still amalgam. You didn’t have injections for fillings and when it was an extraction the injection hurt as much as the tooth pulling itself.

My experiences with Mr Heap were not happy and I remained wary of dentists until I left the UK and had reason to visit one in Singapore. That was the first time I experienced a lie flat dentist’s chair, a bit like business class really, and I think it was the first time I was offered an injection for a filling. I wasn’t exactly confident and when he produced a long hypodermic and proceeded to drive it into the roof of my mouth I feared the worst. My body stiffened and I remember needing a conscious effort to get my legs to relax. But I didn’t feel a thing and I thanked the dental schools back in the UK which had trained this excellent dentist and the system of health care in Singapore which allowed him to invest in state of the art equipment.

After Singapore I was in Hong Kong and I remember the ex-pat dentist there telling me I had a very particular tooth formation which required significant structural work. It would probably cost me several weeks of my salary but fortunately we left for Switzerland before I needed to decide on getting it done. No-one mentioned such work in Switzerland but then you don’t need anything special for a Swiss dentist to give you a hefty bill. Fortunately the ones I saw were all very good including the Iranian who hummed whilst he worked and taught me breathing exercises so that he could minimise the pain relief that he was giving.

It’s all come full circle now and I’m back in the UK. There’s still NHS dentistry if you can find it otherwise you pay for it and the dentist I go to announced that it was not doing any more NHS work so that it could ‘give a better service to its private patients’. And charge more for it too.

It’s a practice of course and it’s run like a business. My dentist is just an employee but he’s pretty good and he has my confidence. He wears these binocular fittings to his glasses and looks like an extra from Dr Strangelove. However even with them he couldn’t find his way down my tooth to investigate a suspected root canal problem. It’s still there but it’s not hurting so I’m quite relaxed about that because I’ve heard nasty stories about root canal work.

Some time last year he took a tooth out. He told me it was necessary. I told him I didn’t like the idea. ‘That’s why we’re doing it now’ he said. He said he’d deaden the nerves, I asked him to double his usual quantities, and that I’d hear some strange noises but that I wouldn’t feel a thing. He was right. I heard some strange screwing noises and then the tinkle as he dropped a rather small  tooth into the enamel bowl held by his assistant.

And then on Tuesday it was filling time: first an injection which I did not feel, then the rubber mat around the tooth so that he could work in the dry, then the high-speed drill and finally the light cured composite resin filling. No pain, no restrictions on eating and drinking and no worries about mercury. A world away from Mr Heap who I’m sure would have done just as well. But £150 still seems a bit steep although I’ll pay a lot for freedom from pain.