Teething ordeals and serendipity
MY FEAR of dentists stemmed from my constant and compulsory visits to the dental clinic as a child.
I loved sweet drinks and all kinds of sweets since young. I would crunch them into bits to assuage my sweet tooth longings.
This led to excessive sugar residue on my teeth. With poor dental care, the bacteria had a field day destroying the enamel. Soon enough, tooth decay set in, leading to a nagging toothache.
In the 1960s, the Government Dental Department conducted regular dental checks for all primary school students, every three to six months. This early intervention worked well for me as it saved me from losing teeth unnecessarily.
The sound of the dental drill and the filling of cavities made me baulk each time they made their rounds to my school.
The stoic and worried lot among us had no choice but to sit in contemplative silence, praying that the fate awaiting us would be quick and painless. It was payback time for indulging in sweets with abandonment and throwing dental hygiene to the wind.
On hindsight, I am thankful for the early intervention programme as I did not lose any of my teeth. Many of my premolars and molars which had gone through jaw-rattling drillings and fillings with amalgam were saved. In the old days, we had not heard of health hazards posed by amalgam which contains mercury. There weren’t any lingering side effects.
Now in my senior years, I have lost a molar or two.
Recently, I had teeth fractures caused by ageing, overcrowding, cavities and constant but inadvertent crushing of foods and bone fragments. I developed an inflammation from a fractured molar with half of it still fine and firm.
After the inflammation had subsided, I went to a government dental clinic to extract the bad half. One dentist said it could be saved while another insisted it had to be extracted completely. Unfortunately, on the day of my appointment, I was attended to by the latter who insisted on getting indemnity before she agreed to remove the bad half.
I am glad I saved my good half. It is nothing to shout about as you can easily get an implant to replace a lost tooth, which can last you a lifetime.
On a lighter note, my son was advised to have all his four wisdom teeth removed as they were growing sideways and the subsequent overcrowding would wreck his set of teeth, leading to disfigurement and tooth decay.
To save costs, he discussed with me and my wife his thought of having the extractions done in KL instead, as he might need post-dental home care.
After a lull, we asked him when he was coming back to do the extraction. Much to our surprise, he said he had had it done already.
His old schoolmate had introduced him to a dentist, a fellow student of his in their pre-u days, to carryout the procedure.it wasn’ t easy as it had to be performed over two sessions. The first session of extracting three wisdom teeth was quite straightforward except that his jaws were a bit stubborn so more force than normal was needed before they yielded. The excessive force even caused the forceps to bend slightly (no exaggeration!). During the ordeal, he felt as though his jaws were being yanked out. The fourth wisdom tooth was even more difficult – surgery was required to remove it.
The serendipitous meeting with the dentist led him to eventually marrying her, the love of his life, a year later – the one who had “inflicted” him with so much pain and anxiety. It was such a heart-warming story which many thought could only happen in the movies or novels.