The Biter Bit

You'll have to read yesterday's post first if you want this one to make sense.

I've had my treatment. The dentist, I think, was getting his own back for me being such an ex-pat, even though I still strenuously deny that was what I was being. I've even consulted some other ex-pats about the situation and they agreed that I wasn't being one.

Anyway, the dentist started off by apologising for trying to change my appointment, which immediately put him in pole position because I'd wanted to apologise first. An apology second sounds like an afterthought. Anyway, apologise second I did, and I started to explain the reason why I couldn’t make it any earlier, but he interrupted with a curt, “Yes, yes.”

This was the equivalent, for me, of the sound of a doctor in a film putting on one of those rubber gloves in a way that makes it snap against the wrist.

Then he asked me if I’d been in any pain and I admitted that, yes, the tooth had been a little sensitive. He told me that was understandable and perfectly normal. I was then informed that he wouldn’t be using any local anaesthetic today because he needed to be sure that it fitted correctly and that I could bite evenly.

This seemed ominous. Surely I’d be able to tell, even anaesthetised, whether my upper and lower teeth were connecting with each other on both sides of my mouth.

This news that I was going to be crowned without the cushion of anaesthetic, as it were, was the equivalent for me of that doctor in that film with the noisy manner of putting the rubber glove on saying, “Bend over!”

Anyway, he snapped the temporary crown out and pushed the new one in. Youch! He told me to bite. The crown was too big because I couldn’t quite close my jaw on the other side of my mouth. He yanked the crown out again. Ooof! He filed it down a bit with his handheld electric scythe. I was very relieved that this wasn’t taking place while the crown was in my mouth.

He put the crown back in again. Yowser! Still couldn’t close my jaw properly. Out it came again. Yearrggh! He filed for a bit longer before roughly re-inserting it. Oyay! Because most of it’s metal, it had been heated up by the filing process. Double yargghhh! Still no joy. He filed again, then called for the cement. This was applied to my tender, sensitive gum. Eeeek!

He made me bite down hard on some cotton wool. As I’m running out of Beano sound effects, let’s just say that this was the worst pain yet. The worst pain, that is, until I informed him that it still didn’t fit properly and he got his handheld electric scythe and filed it down while it was in my mouth.

The next time he asked me if I could close my mouth properly, I lied and said yes. I walked home very miserably. When I close my mouth now, I look like Geoffrey Boycott.

That’s the last time I ever refuse to change a dental appointment. Especially as my after school commitment was cancelled anyway, so I could have easily made the time he wanted me to go in.

Speaking of doctors, as I was yesterday, I saw the movie Patch Adams last night. I’d never seen it before. It stars, as I’m sure you know, Robin Williams as a student doctor who wants to open up a new type of hospital that heals people by making them laugh. At several points, hilariously, he adorns a red nose and starts leaping around being Robin Williams in a ward full of cancer patients. He also manages to make a man who’s dying of pancreatic cancer laugh by listing different euphemisms for death whilst dressed as an angel.

I have to say that, whilst I agree that hospitals could do with a bit more humour in them, Williams didn’t make me laugh once during this film. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the most irritating screen performance of all time.

I brought this up at work today and one of my colleagues summed it up perfectly by saying that she finds it disturbing when grown men behave like little boys all the time.

I was shocked to learn at the end of the film that it’s actually based on a true story.

What a splendid chap.