19. Dentist round 1

The day arrived for the dental assessment at Peterborough hospital that had been arranged for me to check my teeth. I was dreading this more than anything so far. As we got into the car I said to Paul 'I'm actually more frightened of this than when I left to go and have surgery!'

He just looked at me and said 'I know Bab' I sat in the waiting room and checked my smart watch 123bpm and my legs were shaking.

A lady came and took me into a room and I had to stand in a x ray machine. It reminded me a little of having a mammogram done but instead of having my boob squashed in between 2 plates whilst I grimly held on for dear life, I had to stand with my chin on a platform and biting on a black stick whilst the machine circled round my head.

We got called into a small room with a female dressed in scrubs and a dental nurse. She asked my name and all the usual questions which I've now come to expect as default whenever you go somewhere or meet someone new. All I can be grateful for is I am not permanently inflicted with a lisp as my birthday 17th of the 6th 1967 is proving to be a challenge when I have something wrong with my tongue or mouth. She went on to tell me all that I already knew about radiotherapy and checking teeth and I all I could think was, <<<do people really get to this stage of the cancer game and not know why they are even here?>>> Eventually she said she wanted to have a look, although the x ray picture of my mouth was on display on her monitor in front of us. A stark reminder of how very few teeth I actually have left ( 11 on the top 10 on the bottom) I moved to the examination chair and told her in no uncertain terms,

'Don't be prodding or picking at anything cos I haven't got a dentist, so if anything falls off later I can't get it fixed!'

She and the nurse hovered over me and she took a mental dental mirror out of the spit bowl she was being proffered by the dental nurse and started looking in my mouth. Then she turned the metal mirror round and calmly informed me she was 'just' going to tap. The first tooth she tapped, my anxiety went from about 10 to 1000 as she rapped on the side of a double filled molar on the bottom of my mouth. The noise although obviously echoing through my skull I could tell meant she was really giving more than a gentle but consistent tap. She then moved on to the broken partially filled tooth that I have been nursing since before covid.

Tap...Tap....TAP....TAP..... TAP I let out a 'aarrgrhhhh' sound. She stepped back still hovering over me 'Oh that hurt?'

'No actually none of them hurt but how hard do you think you need to smash it'

'Its the normal dental assessment' She said curtly. At this point, being questioned, I lost it. I sat up and said

' No, actually smashing the fuck out of someone's mouth with something metal harder and harder is definitely NOT normal, and you better step away from me and let me calm down cos right now I feel like punching you in the face!'

I sat up trying to breathe and calm down as I heard her panic alarm start as she scurried out the room. 'I don't want to be here I want to go home' I said to Paul

' And if we go home you're going to have to come back another time' he said trying to calm me down. 'No I won't I'll just die of cancer its f**king easier'

The door opened and the girl re entered the room with a male dentist who proceeded to tell me all the same rubbish as she had and I wasn't even listening, I was trying to come down from the spiral of fight or flight that was still whizzing round my body. After about 5 minutes of his droning on about information I already know, he got to the part about having to have 1 tooth out and he would book it in for as soon as possible ( the following Friday, 4 days time) and got me to sign the consent form for 1 tooth. I was just pleased to be getting out of there, away from the smell, their attitudes, and anything to do with my childhood memories of being pulled back into a dentist chair with a gloved hand over my mouth to stop me screaming out for my mother whilst they stuck the second injection into my arm to take my teeth out. After 46 years I close my eyes in that dentist chair and I am right back there, 12 years old and being held down, the smell of a latex glove filling my mouth and nose, not being able to breathe, fighting not to die as the blackness took me.

Some damage can't be undone, only avoided, at all cost, until now.