On Easter Sunday I was given four Easter eggs.  This was particularly exciting as we’d made a family pact that we wouldn’t do Easter Eggs this year, but it turns out, I was the only one that stuck to this (I did crochet chicken egg cosies though, just so you don’t think I’m too mean).

I got home in the evening, lined the eggs up to decide which one to open, and….my tooth broke.  Feeling a bit sorry for myself, I put them all away, and called the dentist on Tuesday.  They were shut.  I called on Wednesday.  The first time they could see me out of work hours was three weeks away.

To cut a very long story short, this, coupled with a growing sense of unease about the dentist I’ve been to for years, resulted in my making an appointment with a new dentist.  I got an emergency appointment to discover that I’d not broken my tooth – it had collapsed in on itself due to previous bad work done on it.  It turns out across all my teeth there is £775 worth of work that needs to be corrected, and a good chance that I will have to have at least one extracted.

Anyway, to fix this tooth, I had to go back last Saturday to spend an hour in the chair having, what ended up being my first root canal surgery.  I’m not good with dentists.  I punched the old one (by accident, although now I wish it had been harder, as it’s quite tricky to magic £775 out of nowhere, especially when you’ve already paid him to do the work).

When I walked in, I told my new dentist that I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or pass out first, but if it was the latter, could she just get on with it while I was unconscious?  If that didn’t give her a good idea of my nerves, the fact that I burst into tears as she moved the needle towards my gums did.  She was amazing.  She put on some relaxing music, asked the nurse to put a DVD on the screen mounted on the ceiling and then told the nurse to hold my hand.  Nurse then had to count my breathing in and out for me as apparently I was close to hyperventilating.

I can honestly say, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel a thing – the new dentist is clearly some sort of magician.  There was only one small problem:

The video the nurse put on was a David Attenborough nature one.  The sort I admire, but have refused to watch ever since I saw a whale popping a penguin out of its skin and devouring it.  I was so cross – that penguin would hardly have been a snack for that great big whale – he only did it for fun, possibly just for the camera – he looked like that sort of whale.  But I had no choice, I lay back for an hour, focussed intently on the screen and music so I didn’t think about what was happening in my mouth, and watched at least 12 animals get eaten by predators.  I was not a happy bunny at all.  (Although possibly happier than the animals on screen).

I have to go back to the dentist.  Quite a few times, funnily enough.  I’m not worried about the hurty factor any more, but I am thinking of taking my own DVD next time :o)

Totally unrelated, but much prettier than a tooth…