Toothache

Pain is an odd thing - I experience it spatially, and in colour. In the last few days I had sudden toothache in many teeth at once, including one which is an artificial crown - so this was referred pain, I presume.

Now it has subsided to one smaller area of my gum. If I had any money I could go to a dentist of my choice. Since I'm pretty well broke at the moment I have to scrabble round for a so-called 'National Health' dentist, or wait for the pain to go away.

I think this is not a tooth problem really, but soft tissue. For years, dentists told me there was nothing that could be done about gingivitis, so I watched my gums shrink back slowly and my teeth appear to lengthen.

This all makes me feel angry - since I brush my teeth twice or thrice a day, went regularly for checkups when dentists were available, taught my children to take care of their teeth. But now these problems arise and for me, at the moment, there is no help, unless I drive many miles and enrol with a clinic still condescending to see non-private patients, and then endure the rude and money-driven practices they have to use: hot-seating for instance. This is when they bring you in to the ghastly chair, put on gloves (new ones, we hope), examine you, suggest X-rays or other treatment, even get as far as giving you that anaesthetic - and then bundle you out into the waiting room while they look at someone else. You sit and wait for the dope to take effect and wonder how long your rival for the dentist's attention will be. Will the drug have worn off by the time you get in there again?

Then the other person comes out, and you get bundled back in for a rapid, indecently rapid treatment. No time for discussion, or asking if you want to go ahead, or explaining what your options might be. Having mercury amalgam inserted into my mouth is not a pleaseant thing. But it's not discussed. I know at least one dental nurse with MS, and a doctor who is convinced that MS = mercury poisoning. No doubt someone somewhere is charting it all. And oddly, I remember also playing with live mercury at school, rolling it in our hands. Quicksilver, it was called then. Magic - but no-one knew how deadly it was.

Knowledge of these things changes, and so does the pattern of power and money and professional practice. But toothache stays more or less the same.