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So I’m panicking all night, barely sleep. I have a dentists appointment at 9:40. It’s just a checkup but they’re usually worse than the actual work. (Just to clarify, I have no issue with needles or drills, my problem with dentists goes much deeper. It’s *allowing* a relative stranger poke around in my mouth while I lie there acquiescent. Maybe I was bummed while I was under the gas or something as a child.)

Get there, ‘there’s a bit of a wait’, oh great. So now as well as sweating away for ages waiting for Dr Death (this is a new dentist, never met him before), I also have to worry about my car being ticketed.

Finally get in twenty minutes after the scheduled appointment and sit down in the chair of pain. The dentist seems nice enough, and like all Britain’s health carers, comes from a different country, Portugal in this case. he wants to chat first about why i’m there and what I see coming from the visit.

That’s nice, a bit better than the usual, ‘lie down, talk about your teeth like you’re not there, line himself for 200 quid’s worth of expensive and painful work and then sting me for 16 quid for ten minutes work on the way out’, that I’m used to. He actually seemed concerned and nodded understandingly when I explained I was terrified enough to sprint out of the door. He glanced at the sweat patches on my T-shirt…..’yes’, he said, lets have a look and see’. I assume the position, he dons his body armour. After a bit of scratching around in my mouth while I try and punch holes in his chair upholstery with my fingers, he removes his hands from my bottom… I mean mouth, looks at me closely and after ascertaining if I was in pain or not (I’m not, not even sensitive), he tells me he’ll see me in six months.

What kind of dentist appointment is that? I question him, angry that I’m not going to get financially and orally reamed. I point out that there are holes, I can feel them with my tongue. Do it again I say, and this time find some pain to put me through. He assures me there is no decay, that any irregularities are purely small steps in existing fillings. If they start hurting then pop in and we’ll sort them out he tells me but for the meantime, your teeth are good and strong, gums are healthy, lots of fillings from repeated visits to my childhood dentist, Mr Touchyanus, but overall, not bad at all.

I stagger down the stairs, not sure how to feel. This isn’t how I expected the visit to go at all. This must be how it feels for normal people when they go to the dentist. How bizarre. I make another appointment for June and leave.

There is a traffic warden bearing down on my car, I check my watch, it’s been in a 30 minute zone for 45 minutes. That’s more like it.