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Tuesday, March 01, 2005

I HATE dentists! (Part II)

This is a continuation from the previous post.

I had eight of my upper front teeth fixed. Fixed meaning capped. I tortured myself by going to the dentist week after week after week over something some stranger said to me.

The dentist took before and after photos of me (or rather my teeth). I never looked at them. First she made a mold of my original teeth, then we selected the desired colour from a catalogue, much like choosing the colour of hair dye when you want to highlight your hair. Eventually, we decided on two shades so it would look more natural. 6 white ones in front and 2 not so white behind. The dentist proudly proclaimed to me "You know, I have done several solid gold caps on special request before." (Its beyond me, why anyone would want to have gold teeth?)

Then she started to drill off my original tooth until only stumps were left. I almost flinched in horror when she showed me the stumps. "What have I done??!" My dentist liked to listen to music and hum along as she worked so the session would go something like this.

Equipment: *drill drill drill*
Dentist: *hum hum hum*
MG: *ahh ahh ahh*
Dentist: Painful?
MG: *mmpph mmpph mmpph* (How to talk with drill in mouth?)

I had to wear a temporary mold over those stumps and walk around like that for a while. After the original cap was ready, the dentist put them over the stumps and cemented them. "They're like your original teeth now. You can brush and treat them as though they are your teeth but avoid biting into apples, sugar canes and other hard stuff." she told me. Then she told me that my gums were in bad shape and she had to do something about them. So, she gave me some painful injections and.....

Equiment: *slice slice slice* (cutting the gums into "shape")
Dentist: *hum hum hum*
Equipment: *sew sew sew* (sewing back some of the gums to close them up over the teeth)
Dentist: *hum hum hum*

After that.... ta da.... I had a brand new several thousand Ringgit flashing new smile which I used in full force on all those forced posed studio wedding photos I took. (I still had to practise smiling without showing the lower teeth but thats a lot easier than smiling without showing any teeth).

But one evening....many years later.... at a cocktail function at work.... one of the caps dropped out! (horror of horrors). I had to slip it back on and kept quiet the rest of the evening hoping I wouldn't swallow my own tooth! It was a weekend too. So I had to keep the tooth till Monday before I could get it cemented back. I still have nightmares about that one! Especially since gums recede with age and sometimes some of the caps feel lose. (Ish! Don't want to think about that).

Recently, when I visited the dentist on the advice of my gynae while I was pregnant with baby to have my tooth decay fixed, the dentist told me....

Dentist: "You know, these days we have a much simpler procedure for whitening teeth."
MG: "You mean, like using those Colgate paint on the teeth like that ah?"
Dentist: "Something like that"

Aaaarrhhh! Geram! (And to think I had 8 of my original God given teeth drilled to stumps!) Now do you know why I hate dentists??! (Probably more than the average person).

Well, thats the extent of "Cosmetic" surgery I will ever do, thank you very much. I am not going to do a thing about the several chins that I have, or the laughing buddha type of belly or them hanging papayas. So there! (No Botox for me, nosiree. One just has to come to terms with one's aging body, especially after childbirth but apparently more and more women are choosing to go under the knife these days.)

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