Member-only story
Yes, I know each of my teeth, individually and personally.
677.
It started when I was living in Hungary and realised that I didn’t want to go to a Hungarian private dentist. Don’t get me wrong, they’re extremely good at what they do, but back then, they cost too much for me. I didn’t have an NHS dentist in the UK any more.
So the first thing I did was, I started flossing in the evenings before brushing my teeth. That was a bit of a revelation because it was clear that gunge had been building up for a while. One of my wisdom teeth was in trouble because flossing hurt.
Eventually I had to go to the Hungarian dentist of an English friend of mine who looked at the tooth, x-rayed everything and told me I needed a root canal or an extraction. I went for the extraction with gas-and-air (laughing gas) for pain relief because it didn’t matter how many injections he gave me, my tooth didn’t go numb. He kept apologising for missing the nerve which I knew he’d hit square-on twice, and I explained to him my tragic lack of reaction to cocaine. So we went with nitrous oxide, which doesn’t make me laugh but does make me act like I’m drunk and have hallucinations of weird noises. I didn’t care about the pain which was far away.
It was fine: crunch crunch the tooth was out. The wound healed quickly and my other teeth moved up with relief…
