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Teeth

by Kamouraskan

A while back I discovered that I had a bone disease called Paget's Syndrome. It's inherited, discovered by a blood test. It occurs in several wonderful forms that are varied and marvellously diverse, though almost always in the elderly. In fact, it's almost impossible to even detect before forty. It can cause swelling of the skull, or cripple you. Now that I have you all prepped for humour, here's an amusing little anecdote about an unusual side effect and its consequences.

My teeth had been mysteriously falling out from the time I was six because they were lacking what I now know is a certain bonding agent. I was warned at ten that I would have dentures before thirty. Thanks to cutbacks in Universal Medicare, I spent, I estimate, $10,000 over the years inadequately delaying this. The Lord only knows how much my poor parents spent on this hopeless task.

Once while delivering an estimate, a dentist compared the cost of restoring my teeth to that of rebuilding Berlin after the second world war.

Up until then, I'd always figured that by being a post baby boomer I would have this tremendous advantage. All the problems associated with aging would be solved by the time I got to them, right? Hair plugs would be a painless five minute operation, eyesight would be miraculously corrected by sealed contacts; it was going to be a wonderful world to fall apart in. Anyway, despite my dreams of this better world for my kind, no miracles in dentistry occurred.

So after chipping another front tooth, I bit the bullet as well. I made the first of three appointments to have the last 18 surviving choppers yanked out. Six teeth to be removed each time.

So I ask you to imagine this scene. I'm sitting, sweating profusely (is there any other way?), in The Chair for the first appointment. As my luck would have it, the dentist has time on his hands and he offers me one hundred dollars off if I let him do the whole job in one session. Obviously, I am already insane with fear, because I agree. One hour he promises. Now my chart clearly states that I have an absence of these bonding agents in my mutant teeth, but cheerfully ignoring this, he tries one after another to extract them with pliers. He succeeds in crushing them to splinters, one after another. Each splinter which must be surgically extracted from my bleeding gums.. Each shard. With a scalpel. One after the other.

Needles are gratefully received but are almost as bad as the cutting and slashing he's doing in my mouth. He keeps saying, "Almost done, Buddy". Apparently just as in Little Shop of Horrors, he REALLY likes his job and is bonding with me.

Two hours later, yes two straight hours of this, I have run out of poems and songs to divert my mind. I have told the pirates where the treasure is. I may have screamed out, "The Jews are hidden in the attic!" "Do what you want to the girl, just leave me alone!"

He just keeps chuckling and calling me Buddy.

So, two and a half hours later, I am finally, in shock, preparing to leave. I have at least three crimson rivulets running from more cotton in my mouth than Brando had in the Godfather; I'm in agony, and with what is left with my mind I am trying to sort out the fastest route to the pharmacy with how I can pay for all the prescriptions he's given me... when the secretary stops me with a shout and demands full payment for the ''treatment''. All of it.

NOW.

I have only the original one third that was agreed upon for today appointment.

UNLESS YOU PAY THE ENTIRE AMOUNT, she says, YOU CAN''T LEAVE.

Now, can I stop here for a moment and say that it may be a personal quirk, but for some reason I sort of resent paying money to be TORTURED. I have been PAID money for it, (some of the lousy jobs I've held have definitely qualified) but the reverse seemed, well, just not me. I might have preferred that in fulfilling the dentist's sick fantasies, I could have taken a less passive role. I would have much rather worn the rubber Annette Funicello/Mickey Mouse outfit, allowing me to put the ears anywhere I liked.

Back in the pain-filled real world, Attila the Hen is still demanding cash. One thousand and six hundred dollars of it. Now, I have carefully explained that I have only $800 to my name. If I could think through the agony and remember what that was. Spitting out bloody gauzes, I ask to speak to the dentist.

HE'S BUSY.

No doubt after a session like mine, my ''Buddy'' is very busy releasing certain sexual tensions in the back .

For some reason, I find it very hard to speak, so I find paper and write the receptionist a note. I explain I will make out post-dated cheques for the rest of the amount, BUT, first I must call my friend... The Lawyer.

(This is a bluff. My friend, the Lawyer is a constitutional expert, and only useful if I take this to the United Nations. As much as I think it's a worthy cause, I doubt if it will come to that.)

Looking at me with disgust and horror, Nurse Ratchett unsuccessfully tries to prevent me from taking the phone as I drip blood onto her immaculate, white workstation. Even as the blood begins to run down the receiver, I realise that I can't talk on the phone, so how can I carry this off? I pull out my cheque book and begin to fill one out. Hit by inspiration, while I write the cheques, I start mumbling about my favorite Gay Haitian pick-up bars while the blood pools on her desk.

Strangely enough, she makes an executive decision to accept the compromise and the post dated cheques along with $600.00 cash. Maybe she knows my lawyer and the Geneva Convention rules are possibly on her mind.

The finale to all this occurs when I got another call from them. I'm informed that they didn't use dissolving stitches and that I must come in to have them removed. Only $125.00 additional charge.

I took them out myself with nail scissors and tweezers, in front of the bathroom mirror.

I am now making a list of the special someone's I must recommend this dentist to.