Hundreds queue for NHS dentists.
Visited the dental hygientist this morning. We ‘went private’ a couple of years ago, mainly because I’d rather pay £15 a month and receive the excellent service we were used to than switch to another NHS dentist and have my teeth hacked to bits by a moron (not that I’m speaking from experience, well OK, I am…).
I have to say that my dentist and her staff are excellent. Lesley (my dentist) is very astute and recognised immediately that sitting in a dentist’s chair wasn’t my favourite place in the world, although I think the fact that I was whiter than white, shaking slightly and talking to myself (“she’s not a bad lady, she’s not a bad lady…”) may have helped. That and the fact that I have a tendency to want to ask a million questions about what she’s is doing, in a somewhat childlike manner it has to be said:
Lesley, the lovely dentist: “OK, open wide”
Me: “Why?”
Lesley, the lovely dentist: “So I can look into your mouth”
Me: “Why?”
Lesley, the lovely dentist: “Because I need to see if you have any holes in your teeth, or any decay or gum disease”
Me: “Why?”
Lesley, the lovely dentist: “Because that’s what you are paying me to do”
Me: “Oh.”
You can always use money to reason with a child me, and you should hear the conversations we have when she gets that pointy little metal stick and starts jabbing at my gums.
Anyway, I didn’t have the dentist this morning. I had my bi-monthly “one every two months” visit to the hygienist. Now there are two hygienists, both are very good at their job, but both have a very different manner. One is ‘matronly’. You walk in, and from there forth you are under her control and you’d better damn well do what she says. Considering she is wielding a lot of equipment and devices that could cause a lot of pain, I have a tendency to mutter “Yes Ma’am”, lie back and think of Scotland.
The other hygienist is much more relaxed. She’s a bouncy blonde (no doubt she owns, or is possibly nicknamed, Tigger). She’s fun, and loves to chat. Constantly. Whilst she’s prodding and hacking at tartar, examining my gum line, flossing my teeth into submissions, all the time she’s talking.
Now I had a dentist that did this, he would yak away about golf, football, politics or the state of the pop music industry in Malaysia (he had me there, didn’t know there was such a thing) but he never expected more than the odd grunt of recognition if anything at all. Unlike Tigger the hygienist.
This morning, as a perfect example of her ‘art’, Tigger the hygienist started to talk about the “queues of people in Scarborough, isn’t that awful”. Whilst talking she had the little mirror in my mouth, and the pointy metal thing with which was gouging at my back teeth. She paused at the end of the sentence. I made a noise that I thought sounded like an affirmative one and, seeing as it was all I could do not to gag, I thought it was pretty good.
She obviously didn’t: “Sorry?”
Eh? Was she seriously asking me to reply? She had two metal implements near the back of my throat, with her hand jacking my mouth open further than I thought possible, what was she expecting?
“Uhhh huuhhh I ink ho oo.” I blurbed.
“Yes, I know, but I wouldn’t have either but I guess it depends who you know.”
WTF?
Seemingly satisified by my response, she continued with her work. I decided not to press the matter further.