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  1. Long reads
7 March 2013updated 24 Sep 2015 10:46am

A traumatic visit to the family dentist reveals that my teeth are furred up like a kettle

Nicholas Lezard's "Down and Out" column.

By Nicholas Lezard

Welcome to my world of pain. I woke up with what I imagine is a trapped nerve in my left leg, making any movement at all that involves it really rather painful. The Beloved told me the story of an Australian nurse who told a friend of hers suffering from Man Flu, “what you need is a six-pack of toughen the fuck up” (it works really well if you do the accent), but really she was sympathetic, particularly as I had to go in this morning to have the various shards of my splintered rear molar pulled out.

It is nice, if “nice” is really the word I’m groping for, to have a dentist within walking distance. But if you’re going “ow” every time you move your left leg, what would have been an otherwise jaunty and insouciant stroll towards a thoroughly enjoyable extraction, as these things so often are, turned out to be like something from Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. “Cold enough for you?” asked my local Big Issue seller, the nice guy whose pitch is outside Waitrose. I assured him it was and was glad he wasn’t carrying any magazines, as I had only a tenner in my pocket and indeed the world, and needed to buy tea, bread, butter and orange juice on the way back.

As I sat in the waiting room, I took out my TLS and read a very interesting article on the British secret service’s use of torture from the Second World War on. That the reviewer didn’t go into any precise details about the techniques employed was, I suppose, some kind of relief. Then again, the imagination was left free to roam.

On reflection, I think it is safe to say that if you are an arm of the intelligence services of this power or any other, it would be unwise of you to entrust me with any particularly sensitive information that you’d prefer me to keep to myself. Do you know that brief but memorable sequence when Homer Simpson goes to the dentist? You can find it on YouTube but it goes roughly like this: in a dentist’s waiting room, we hear Homer screaming and calling the dentist “you butcher!” A mother reassures her spooked child: “I’m sure that man has a special tooth problem.” We then hear Homer screaming: “I don’t even have a special tooth problem! This is just a routine check-up!”, and the child dives out of the window.

That’s what I’m like when I have a scrape and a polish. I suppose it would help if I didn’t leave an average of two and a half years between check-ups, for the plaque build-up apparently leaves my teeth in the condition of a kettle that has been in constant service, in a hard water area, since the Coronation – but then that’s the way I roll. Take it or leave it. It is also a noble family tradition, inherited down the male line. My dentist, of whom I am actually rather fond, is also the family dentist, and my mother once asked him how good a patient my father was. “It’s all I can do to get him in the chair,” was his reply. I am, perversely, proud; for my father has always been very grown-up and stoic about this, and it is comforting to know that he, after all, has his weaknesses.

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Anyway, even with three injections, there was a lot of my saying things like “no, stop”, and “can’t we just leave that bit in?” and, to be honest, the nurse holding my hand. I was interested to note that you really do break into a cold sweat in situations like this. I also only thought much later of saying something funny like, “You know, if you want my bank account details and PIN number, we really don’t have to go through this unseemly rigmarole.”

After a lot of yanking and fossicking about, he finally got the bastard out. And the tooth, ho ho. I looked at it – or rather, its shards – in the little tray next to me. They looked ancient, degraded, like something an archaeologist could plausibly claim dated from the Cretaceous period. Jesus, I thought, are all the others like that? I also wondered why the pink water they give you to swill your mouth out – so coloured, I always thought, to disguise any blood – was in this instance replaced by clear water; for now the blood was plain to see. And the coup de grâce? I’m allowed no more than one glass of wine this evening, for alcohol is a vasodilator, and it would start the hole bleeding all over again. “Don’t they know who you are?” asked my friend Tig. “It’s an outrage!” I wonder whether a little bleeding is such a bad thing.

Oh, and I forgot the bread and the butter at Waitrose. Can’t wait for the mile-and-a-half limp there and back.

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