You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile

This week: I tried a new dentist.

Barry White, dogs and bagpipes. Three of my deeply ingrained phobias. But these three combined, pale into insignificance when it comes to phobia number four: the dentist. Like many phobias, my terror of the dentist stems from traumatic childhood experiences. As I type, I am literally shuddering in my own skin with the recollection of the variety of atrocities that I have endured in that dreaded chair throughout my 38 years.

At one point in my early years, I had a really lovely dentist. Mr Goldup was gentle and smiley and I always left his surgery laden with lollipops and cartoon stickers proclaiming the benefits of flossing in between your peggies (just a slight contradiction, now I come to think of it). My phobia set in after this teddy bear of a man left for pastures new and we changed surgeries. With the bedside manner of Harold Shipman, Mr Lomax took visible pleasure in administering various forms of torture regardless of my tender years. Unfortunately for me, I was blessed with too many teeth and the task of extracting them was bestowed upon Adolf Lomax, who went about this with the delicacy of King Kong doing his afternoon shopping at Villeroy and Boch. I would have been in less pain if he'd attached them to a HGV going 150km/hour. And this was in the days of general anaesthetic.

I spent the 4 or 5 years leading up to puberty looking like a James Bond villain, thanks to the wonders of modern orthodontics. Every six weeks or so, I got half a day off school to take a bus trip to Liverpool and visit a lavish Georgian terrace on Rodney Street with an enormous front door painted in beautiful eggshell blue. This spectacular building housed the orthodontic practice of Mr Birkenhead, whose soft wavy hair and winning smile cleverly disguised Lucifer himself. With a CV boasting a wealth of Nazi war crimes, Mr Birkenhead refused to lay down his tools until my bloodcurdling screams could be heard from the Wirral. Each new brace was screwed on tighter than a duck's arse in winter. And then I hopped on the bus again, straight back to school to be greeted by my classmates with the inventive new nickname 'Metal Mickey'.



84 Rodney Street: The Gates of Hell

 It will come as no surprise that I have failed miserably in terms of dental welfare, when left to my own devices. During my adult life, appointments have been very few and far between and putting any kind of trust in someone yielding a drill is something that is just quite simply beyond me. I have only visited a dentist under duress and when confronted with the prospect of imminent agony. After a recent throbbing tooth episode, I reluctantly made an appointment at a surgery close to home where my friend Antoinette is the dental assistant. And when the pain subsided. I phoned up and cancelled, telling a big pack of lies about an imaginary emergency meeting at work (yeah, right, like I'm that important). Antoinette saw through this ruse and with some gentle badgering, finally managed to coax me there earlier this week, with my husband holding my hand and my face like a robber's dog.

On entering the corridor leading to the surgery, when we attempted to switch on the lights; nothing happened. Everything was pitch black. Who in their right mind would enter a dental surgery in the dark? I refused point blank. I would rather stand in Harrod's window naked on Christmas Eve. With the lights finally on, Antoinette comfortingly put her arm around me and said, "Don't worry, Bri's here and I'm here, what else do you need?". "My Mum", I muttered sulkily. Pathetic. With a capital P.

The new dentist, fully aware of my fears, was approachable, mild-mannered and reassuring. He listened to my concerns, some irrational, some genuine, and discussed honestly but sensitively the treatment he deemed necessary for the preservation of my toothy grin. Most importantly, he didn't come anywhere near me with that nasty implement with the hook on the end that most dentists like to poke into your gums. I left armed with a special toothpaste that I later found out tastes of soap and mouthwash that creates a kind of rabid dog effect. All in all, I felt less anxious and prepared to make the required effort to keep all 28 of my pearly whites in place well into my old age.

Would I try it again?: I have an appointment booked for 22 September, but something tells me that I could be called to an emergency meeting...