Yesterday, I paid £112 for a filling… it was one I knew I needed to have but put it off after the last time I went. Then I got that letter through and had to book in. I hate the dentist, BUT I really like MY dentist. It’s a lovely lady called Miss Hayward who I’ve seen running, sometimes she has Heart on her radio and we have nice little chats. She puts me at ease.
I used to visit a dentist who’s stomach rumbled SO loudly, he was a pretty skinny, quietly spoken man and for some reason he made me nervous. I guess I was concerned he might make a mistake due to hunger. I know I’m not alone – many of us have an irrational fear of the dentist. Before I went in to see mine, a family came out and I heard Miss Hayward informing the parent that the children weren’t brushing their teeth enough. It’s a big responsibility as a parent, and I tried to look sympathetically at the embarrassed Dad who walked past me on his way out. How can a parent convey the future of poor dental health to a kid – without demonstrating it the pain? Are those gruesome pictures on the wall of bad teeth effective?
I’ve been on a bit of a journey with this dentist, she fitted me with a mouth guard, chatted to me about my thinning tooth enamel, taught me about flavourless flouride toothpaste, I needed to use during a course of aromatherapy and she explained to me about how the root canal treatment I now need might be in 20 years time. She gives me hope..
As I lay in her chair yesterday, looking up at the beautiful desert island beach scene on her ceiling, above a second equally spectacular poster of the Amazon rainforest I noted my knuckles weren’t so tightly grasped around the chair as she drilled away my old filling to replace it with a new one. So does that mean I now like the dentist! I walked out of their happy before I got the bill! But once I got in my car, after the shock of the cost, I found myself justifying it – that her brilliant bedside manner and skill in helping me overcome my dentistry issues was worth the money. It’s official. I’m losing the plot!