Knowing the Drill: Why I Hate Going to the Dentist

Aaah! The relief. Half an hour of mild discomfort and two weeks of pain is gone. 

I love modern dentistry. At least, I should.

It still took me over a week after cracking my tooth to pluck up the courage to book an appointment. 

I hesitate to say I’m actually dental phobic, because I think there’s a rational explanation behind my anxiety.

I recall the utter disbelief I felt when an Australian work colleague mentioned  - not boasted - just happened to drop into the conversation -  that she didn’t have any fillings.

Yeah, right, I smiled knowingly. 

But she didn’t. Not a single solitary one.

We were the same age. She was not on a sugar free diet. How could this be?

It took me a while to figure it out. Years, actually. Probably not until I had my own child and took her to the dentist. And heard gentle, coaxing phrases like, “We don’t want to scare her, so we aren’t going to drill out that cavity. It’ll fall out soon enough.”

Then the penny dropped. I’d had the dentist from hell.

There was some pretty stiff competition in the 70s. I think most British friends in my age group suffered filling after filling after filling. The dentists drilled like children’s teeth were hiding some secret golden elixir that only two fillings a visit would procure. 

The first time I experienced a pain-free drilling was as an adult. So didn’t novocaine work so well in the 70s? Or was it that they didn’t want to use too much? Perhaps the terrifying haitus that anticipated the nerve-shattering agony of drill-hitting-nerve was thought to be character-building. 

But on top of all these generic dental delights, there was my dentist. A practitioner of such supreme awfulness, I think he modelled himself on Orin Scrivello in Little Shop of Horrors.  

You tend to take things for granted when you’re a kid: the huge dog, the blood on the apron, your mother laughing at the skid marks the dentist had on his overall when he pulled it out from the back of his trousers - yes, you read it right -  there was an actual dog in the room where I got my teeth filled. Hell, I didn’t care! Who wouldn’t want a distraction like that while having their teeth drilled?

Clearly hygiene was not a big issue (which is the only reason I haven’t mentioned the Nazi dentist of Marathon Man yet. He was cruel, but he was clean) and neither were the finer points of administering anaesthetics. 

For the kind of major tooth-yanking that a pair of pliers down the fairground couldn’t manage, it was gas, back then. Rubber mask over the face, psychedelic designs heralding your imminent unconsciousness and the vomiting of blood and bile that meant you were waking up again. 

That’s if you did. 

Because not one, but two people died in that grubby black chair where I’d had my teeth pulled and drilled, due to the inexpert administration of anaesthetics. 

Interesting that it took two lives to get him finally struck off. Even more interesting for me that my mother was disappointed not to be able to take her child there any longer.