Dig Hard, Dig Deep (Scoop 1)

This post relates to my first experience of French dentistry. Prepare to wince (if you don't, I have failed in my goal). It is a long, ongoing story, so I split it into a few parts in order to stop you getting too bored and speed-reading to the bottom to see if there is anything interesting.

Anyway, to get underway, I should say that, like the French medical service, I assumed that French dentists would be of a high quality, with immediate availability - kind of like a high class call-girl (I would imagine).

As we have just moved house (did I already mention that :-) ), I didn't have any recommendations, so chose the one closest to our house (one dentist is pretty much like another, no?). First surprise: a 2 week wait for an appointment. So, as a proper man, I had spent several months moaning to my wife about the excruciating pain, and, like a proper Englishman, I waited several months before doing anything about it. OK, 2 more weeks, but the wheels were in motion.

Come the big day, I headed off down to the surgery. The signs were good: the surgery was in the courtyard of a beautiful bourgeois house; the waiting room was full of antiques; basically, it was not like any dentists I had ever visited before. Also, unlike any I have ever visited, I was welcomed at the door by the dentist himself - an austere man befitting of his surgery's waiting room, obviously close to retirement, but seemingly steady of hand with a pleasant manner and obviously lots of experience - I should have seen it coming...

I never asked myself, "where is the receptionist? Where is the dental assistant? How much is this going to cost?" as I was waved straight into the surgery. Second surprise: the surgery was also full of antiques, starting with the chair that he beckoned me to sit in. Think imitation beige leather, worn out and patched together with cellotape and you get the idea. OK, it's just a chair - he had comforting high-tech gadgets after all. Look at that Sony monitor in the corner - no idea what it does, but at least it's beige. It looked like one of the oscilloscopes we used at university 20 years ago - actually, maybe not so comforting...

So, napkin on, and in he goes. "Where does it hurt?". Strangely, that day, it didn't hurt at all. He soon fixed that though. With something too closely resembling a fish-hook, he pulled and pushed my teeth in the general area where I said it hurt. Soon enough he found the problem, and like a dodgy garage mechanic (aren't they all?), he gave a sharp intake of breath and told me that I had 2 cavities, both below the gum, one of which had dug a secret passage from one tooth to another. Of course, the problem was down to the previous dentist who had badly filled the teeth.

So he decided to have a closer look. He went off to get his drill bit from one of his antique cupboards, uttering, "Hhhmm, I only seem to have one left but that'll do". He didn't want to use anaesthetic, so in he went, asking me to raise my hand if it hurt. It was OK for a bit, but sure enough he got far enough down to hit the nerve causing my hand to raise, but not under any control. "Hhhmm, even worse than I thought. It'll need at least another four sessions. I'll have to deaden the nerve, do this, do that...come back tomorrow".

At this point, the alarm bells and my gums were ringing. No price ("we'll discuss that at the end of the consultation"), no details, no waiting list - this was the big one; the one that would pay for the new tyres on his Jaguar. Still, as the good Englishman, I didn't dare to kick up a fuss and agreed to come back in tomorrow, which was incidentally a Saturday.

I'll tell you next time about anaesthetic that left my gums burnt, deeper digging (with non-functioning anaesthetic that was obviously past its sell-by date), a filling on the other tooth that left me unable to get my teeth to close on one side of my mouth causing headaches and a final realisation that I needed to see a real dentist...