“I wonder how long I am still going to be burdened with these teeth? That is the burning question on my mind as I lie here in the dentist’s chair. As I am now 59 years old and I must have had my permanent teeth since the age of 5, that gives me 54 years of problems and wishing for better teeth.”
I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that I have teeth, but my teeth like my boobs, must have been the list of last issue to woman kind when they were handed out. As a child I suffered from chronic asthma and the medication that I survived on had a side effect – the result was blue and brittle teeth. What a combination…Then when boobs were becoming the norm mine stayed dormant for another two years before starting to show any signs of ‘peaking’. Very demotivating when everybody in your age group has been wearing frilly bras for nearly two years and you don’t have anything to show.
My lifelong ambition has been to have a toothpaste smile and big boobs. I finally got my wish for my teeth but only the top tiers. This was man made and bloody expensive. Can’t afford the cost for the renovation of the bottom teeth and frankly I can’t be bothered to go through the drama again. There is also the small fact that you can’t see my bottom teeth when I smile so why worry? The boobs never made it to the finish line so I gave up on that wish.
About 25 years ago I had the choice of renovating my teeth or getting bigger & better boobs, teeth/boobs/teeth/boobs…teeth won because everybody could see them. The boobs could be manipulated with extra cushioning. I chose the teeth.
My trials first started when I wanted beautiful teeth for my wedding. My dentist at that time was a part-time professor at Wits and he took on the challenge with great enthusiasm. Our timing was a little off as we only had a few weeks to the wedding but he gave it his best shot and bleached the hell out of them so there would be a semblance of white in my smile whilst tying the knot. During this procedure I found out a few things about myself, I am nothing but determined when I put my head to something. The pain and suffering was immeasurable as we got acid on my top lip quite a few times, burning hole into the flesh and I had to have my gums hacked to give me bigger and better teeth.
“Whoa!” you say.
“Yes, hold my beer and I will enchant you even more!” I say.
My smile matched my wedding dress and after the wedding I went back for more. Round two turned into round twenty, every consultation I lay crying, upside down on the dentist chair and my dentist was drying my tears with the edge of his dental jacket. The material was course and he was rough and it made me cry more. We were halfway through the procedures and I couldn’t stop. I was desperate to scream;’ STOP!STOP!” to but my teeth resembled that of Jane, the cave woman, as they were all filed to sharp points. I will never forget the day he finally finished. The relief turned to disbelief and the tears to joy. There, in the mirror, was this beautiful young woman staring back at me. Her smile was captivating and all the terror and trauma totally forgotten…
Ten years later the first tooth broke. “WTF?!” I think to myself. “Why?” Apparently crowns have a shelf life. Who knew? It never dawned on me that the teeth were not meant to be forever teeth. With the help of superglue, I managed to temporarily secure the faulty front tooth. I scrambled around for a dentist as my Professor had now left the country. My house doctor referred me to a dentist in town. Unfortunately the dentist could only give me an appointment later in the week and I couldn’t trust myself to go to sleep. My fear was that I would fall asleep and the glue would give in resulting in a swallowed tooth, so no sleep. Has anybody had experience with super glue? It works well the first time but it finally gets weaker. The residue from the glue clinging to the tooth makes that the second, third and fourth hundred application gets weaker and finally it doesn’t want to stick. While we were waiting for the dentist we stick and stick and stick. The funny thing is that although the glue becomes unwilling to stick tooth to tooth it doesn’t have a problem sticking tooth to finger in the process. By the time I was on my way to the dentist I had a lot of superglue everywhere.
I arrived at the dental practice on the day of the appointment not being my best person. I mean, I was high on glue and low on sleep, my front tooth hanging on by a tread , my fingers and lips covered in superglue and all of this is contributing to a very low self -esteem.
I walk in, sit down and to my amazement I find that my dentist is rather pleasing to the eye (the one eye that is still semi functioning and half awake) which kind of perks me up. That’s how my introduction to my dentist went. Let me just put the record straight here – I am happily married and my husband is a dish himself but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate beauty. My dentist is like a fine bottle of red wine butI don’t drink red wine.
Twenty-three years later, a lot of new crowns and broken teeth, nights without sleep, glue-induced stupors, tears, and elation, I am still with the same dentist. Crowns are fickle little buggers they can only take so much and then no more. In 23 years, my dentist has aged well and I have not. He is like that lazy-aged steak, and I am the offcut. He fixes my smile, and I am grateful for that, but there was this one incident that makes me cringe a little when I think about it…
Five years ago, my teeth were what I would call suspense teeth. They were keeping me in suspense, were they going to last through the next meal or not? At this stage, I was running a very prestigious tea room, and missing a front tooth while serving the guests did not rank highly on my scale of “To Do” things. “Better safe than sorry,” I said to myself and made an appointment to see my dentist.
Throughout our years of patching the quilt in my mouth, our relationship has always stayed professional. Despite his good looks, he is a very serious perfectionist of the Christian faith. Every inch of him is cool, calm, and collected (maybe a little too much), while I scream of slapdash with a touch of jolly. My jolly spills over into my diet of wine and sweet delicacies like marshmallows and jelly beans, so our outlook on life is totally different. He comes from a very traditional Afrikaans family, and I have morphed into English combined with a little bit of township. So, you get the picture, we are different people. We have not had a lot of conversation over the years either, as he always has his tools in my mouth, which complicates things.
I sit down and explain my dental problems to him. He runs up the bill by taking a lot of x-rays, and then informs me that all the top teeth must go.
“Go? Go where?” According to him, they have to be obliterated. Taken off the face of the earth or rather off the face of Yvette. He starts explaining his elaborate procedure for the resurrection of my teeth, and by the third tooth, I am distressed by all the traveling and arrangements this will take.
“Can’t we do it all in one go?” I ask. “One go?”, he quizzically says. “Yes, all in one day”, I say.
He thinks for a second and says, “You will have to go to the theater”, but I see the idea is growing on him. It’s growing on me too. “How hard can it be?” I ask myself quietly. Once again, that all-or-nothing persona making herself known…
Our consultation finishes on a high note. He is going to work on the mechanics, and I am going to arrange my life. A day in a day clinic. Go in with old teeth, come out with new teeth. “What’s so hard about that?”
Well, life was about to bring me a little clarity about my bright ideas.
Our rendezvous is set for a few weeks later. I am, as always, optimistic and enthusiastic. The day clinic is booked. I have been there before as both my children and dearest husband, also patients of our doctor, have all had a chance to visit the theater for a small procedure. Just mom has been left out, or left sucking the hind tit as they say, but this will soon be rectified. I will have my chance. The theater is a privately-owned enterprise with nursing staff and an anesthetist that look like they are all relics from a bygone era. They are old, very old. I think they belong to the same church group as my dentist because they all have the same look about them, very Afrikaans, very professional, cold and distant with a touch of displeasure thrown in. What’s not to like, I ask myself?
My daughter is my companion in waiting for the day. For some unknown reason, my husband couldn’t make it, but I am grateful as a real Englishman wouldn’t go down too well in these Afrikaans circles. I speak both languages fluently, and I can wear any cap that suits me, so I fit in and I am accepted. On this day, I was Afrikaans and nothing else. When in Rome and all that shit… (Told you, the staff were from another dimension.)
Upon arrival, I complete the usual obligatory forms, I go to the room allotted to me, change into the hospital gown that I am given, and then we wait. Every now and then, an elderly nurse comes in, takes my vitals, makes a few remarks in Afrikaans, and leaves. Everything is straight. Everything is meticulous. Everything is perfect. It looks like a scene out of a picture-perfect clinic.
My turn comes, and I am wheeled to surgery. My daughter is coming with, treading quickly and lightly on the tiles next to the gurney. Our arrival at the theater is without a hiccup, and they allow my daughter to stand next to me until I am fully sedated. My last coherent whisper to my daughter is, “Do NOT let them see my boobs…”
Hours later, I awake in the recovery room. My mouth feels like I have swallowed a moving train, and I can remember complaining about the taste. The picture-perfect elderly nurse smiles indulgently and gives me a mint. I drift off into a drug-induced sleep.
Later that afternoon, I am sitting in the passenger seat of my daughter’s car, going home. I feel like I have been punched in my face. I cannot, for the life of me, think why I thought it was such a good idea. This was nothing compared to what was waiting for me the next day. The effects of the anesthetic had taken me hostage, and I suffered a migraine of epic proportions. To top it all off, my teeth were implants and had temporary caps… my agony was without an end in sight.
I love wine. I love having a glass at the end of each day, celebrating my day. I might have that glass by myself or in the company of friends, and sometimes the glass might be a small one or a huge one, but my wine is my end-of-day festivity. Two days before surgery and many days after surgery, I never had wine. Nothing to celebrate.
Another quirky love of mine is the old-fashioned Rice Krispies served with hot milk and a sliced banana. This is my breakfast treat some mornings. I didn’t have any of that the week before and many weeks after surgery. No treats for Mrs. Metal Mouth.
Apparently, this did not stop me from voicing my displeasure with the lack of wine and Rice Krispies when I arrived back from the theater after my op. My daughter had great pleasure in reenacting the entire scene for me and my family one evening.
“Mom, they were pushing you down the corridor towards the recovery room when you sat up and thundered – Where is the wine?!” She said she looked at the stricken faces of the nurses and tried to quiet my demands by telling me that, unfortunately, there is no wine. This incensed mom even more, and in a very displeased manner she immediately wailed, “If there is no wine, I want Rice Krispies! I want Rice Krispies with hot milk AND bananas!”
Not knowing about my outrageous after-anesthetic self, I remember checking out of the clinic after the op, all flowery and Afrikaans. The nursing staff watched me closely from behind the rims of their glasses. I then thought they were just being their wary selves. Now I know they were actually waiting for my loud, obnoxious, English twin to make her appearance for one last time.
Oh, and I really cringe when I think that my dentist must have seen my droopy twin boobs sagging to the right and left of my voluptuous body as I lay comatose on the operating table, mouth open. He must have. How else did they get those bloody little heart monitors on my chest?
Oh Lordie…
In the end, I just have to add that I have beautiful top teeth, but have since the theater debacle been back for three individual broken crowns. All front teeth. Once I was wrapping hampers and biting the cellophane off with your crowns is not advised. The next time I woke up with a tooth on my pillow, and the last stint was in January 2023 when my crown fell out right before I had to have a foot operation. I can honestly say that the 6 months leading up to the tooth falling out has been emotionally very challenging. The tooth falling out was just the cherry on top.
I now have the fallen crown in a little pouch next to my bed. Christopher asked me the other day what my intention was for the tooth. I replied that I am going to use it for a rainy day and will put it in my shoe when I want a wish granted. Maybe the tooth mouse will take pity on me. I looked him straight in the eye when I said this, leaving no doubt that he would have to act when he finds that Croc and tooth next to his side of the bed.
The end
