A visit to the dentist…
Jean Eisenhauer recalls the trauma of visiting the school dentist and the lifetime fear it left in its wake...
Naively, I don’t remember being too fazed by the first visit to the school dentist. I had my schoolfriends with me and we just had a quick look around, so I wasn’t too perturbed when I had to go back for further treatment. But the memory of that day still haunts me more than 60 years later. Once in the dentist’s chair a mask was clamped over my mouth and nose and, after my initial struggles to escape, I wasn’t aware of anything more except for coming-to bent over a basin being violently sick and a vague awareness of other children in a row with me at these sinks all spitting blood! Perhaps the new NHS intended us to be a generation with fine white healthy teeth like in the American movies, but it failed badly for me. I was unlucky enough to have crooked teeth and needed treatment to straighten them. But my trust in dentists was destroyed; if there was a letter from school reporting a visit by the school nurse or dentist, I would do my best to be off sick that day! I was sent to a London dental hospital for further treatment and I felt so ill on the bus with my mum and little sister that the kindly bus conductor gave me a mint to suck. When we got there they pretended to treat my sister, but I wasn’t going to be conned and my mouth stayed clamped shut. There was no way I’d leave the waiting room for that chair with the mask. In the end they had to admit defeat! On a second visit, my mum got tranquillisers from the doctor but I secretly spat them out. That time, as I darted out of the dentist’s and down the stairs, I heard him mutter, “She’ll have a mouth full of false teeth before she’s 40.” So the years went by until I was 16 and a friend tried to arrange a blind date for me. I heard the boy say, “No way, she has teeth like tombstones.”
‘If there was a letter from school reporting a visit by the school nurse or dentist, I would do my best to be off sick that day!’
I finally braved the dentist to have four teeth removed and a brace fitted; but I always removed it if on a date – what boy would kiss a girl with a load of metal in her mouth? One day I lost the brace and didn’t have the courage to go back to the dentist and face the consequences, so I felt I was doomed to a lifetime of teeth like tombstones. A second chance came when I was pregnant and a really nice dentist took pity on me. He said I could wear a brace at night, but it would take a lot longer and age didn’t matter. He then suggested I could have the three offending teeth ground down to pegs and crowns put on to give me the perfect smile and, because of free treatment for one year after having a baby, it wouldn’t cost me a penny. My happiest day was the day I bit into a piece of toast and left a perfect half circle space. I could smile properly at last! More than 20 years later I had to take my son to have four teeth removed ready for a brace. “It’ll be fine,” I reassured him, “things have moved on and improved since I was young.” Sadly, as we travelled home with him being sick in the taxi from the anaesthetic, he said, “Mum, I’ll never believe you ever again!” Hopefully things are better these days!