An appointment with an orthodontist is never a pleasant experience

No sooner had the surgeon sent me home with a kick-started heart, when my bridge loosened and with it, a slither of crackling from pork belly wedged between two teeth torpedoes towards the dish of yet untouched sauerkraut.

Dinner guests consider it hilarious, but with more gaps than teeth, it’s far from funny. An appointment with an orthodontist is never a pleasant experience. Who enjoys someone’s gloved fingers probing your mouth?

Then there’s the drilling with fearsome tools and a plastic straw sucking up the debris left after prodding, pricking, rasping and filing. All this while lying on your back with head dangling over the edge. Even with eyes closed you hear the incessant noise of the instruments and the heavy sighing of Toothman.

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Is the sighing and “oops!” indicative of a mistake he’s making? His ongoing instructions to the assistant add to the fear. I try thinking of nice things, but probably due to the immediate surroundings, the brain dishes up more bad thoughts. Like the flushed face Juju glugging Blue Label instead of fulfilling his promises to the poor.

“Pass me the Merrifield’s knife, then the hemostat”. Meaning cut and burn? I wince. “The periosteal elevator, make it quick, the flap’s starting to shred”. I open one eye to see the tool with a hook on either side. A ‘flap’ can only be the flesh from the gum? I wince.

Obviously Toothman, who has screwed, chopped and dug in hundreds of mouths, notices these subtle signs. “Are you okay, Cliff?” I nod vigorously to allow him to concentrate on the job and not my mental state.

“Surgical blade No 2”. I wince again. A blade means cutting something. The same shredding gum? He ignores me. I close my eyes and thankfully recall a dentist’s joke the previous orthodontist told me while hacking at a wisdom tooth. A patient asks the dentist if it isn’t nasty spending the day with the hands in someone’s mouth.

“I just think of it as having my hands in their wallet.” I thought it prudent not to explain my sudden giggling to the frowning Toothman. He was still holding the blade holder too close. Anyway, at the end of the day, I’ve a new bridge that can take a 300kg steak.