Who's scared of the Dentist? Tales from the Chair.

Who’s scared of the Dentist?

Many years ago, in fact more years then I really care to remember, I woke up with a toothache. Not just any old toothache you understand, but a full blown Marks and Spencer one with all the trimmings.

I'd flown with my mother to Germany for a two week holiday, staying with her older sister Lilly who had recently moved to Wesel with her new husband Karl. In those days Wesel was a medium sized town in northern Germany, laid out on the banks of the Rhine ad near the Dutch border. It had been almost completely flattened during WW by Allied bombing and mainly consisted of early post war blocks of flats in the centre with more residential ribbon development along the major routes into town. The land was very flat and dotted with farms, perfect for farming and Russian tanks to sweep across from the East, hence the regular flights overhead of low flying Starfighters (or flying coffins as they became known due to the number of crashes) from the many NATO bases. The planes would fly six days a week, and often at roof top height, scaring everything.

Lilly's house was a large 4 bedrooms detached Swiss chalet style building sitting next to flat, open fields with dark rich flood plain soil. They kept chickens and Karl, having been previously a rich landowner before fleeing Eastern Germany in front of the advancing Russians, was a dab hand at growing vegetables. There was always a fine crop of asparagus growing at the end of the garden, guarded by that most ferocious of dogs, a German Dachshund. Woolly, as this particular sausage dog was called, was typical of the breed. Short haired and totally without fear or any sort of self preservation whatsoever. He might have been small but what he lost in stature he more then made up in bravery and a sheer disregard for the consequences.

Karl supplemented his War pension with a small part time job working for an agricultural feedstuff and supplements firm. He travelled widely around the local area visiting most of the farms, discussing with them what was new on the market or taking orders for supplies. He used to take me with him on these trips as it got me out of the ladies hair and gave me the chance to practice my German as Karl's English was mostly non existent other then the odd phrase picked up in the war such as Hande Hoch or Got Im Himmel, the sort of thing you read in Boys Weekly. He wasn't a particularly patient man and I could sense that my stammer (which was a lot worse in those days) and natural shyness used to annoy him. The language barrier didn't help either. Woolly used to sit on the rear seat, barking loudly every time we passed a tractor or farm lorry. Goodness knows why he did this: perhaps it was his in built aggression at anything bigger or louder then he was.

That bloody dog was amazing. We'd drive into a farm where several large, semi feral farm dogs were lounging around, looking suitably tough, and he'd come alive. In fact he seemed to puff up and grow in front of your eyes. Dogs that would otherwise have taken a lump out of you would beat a hasty retreat as Karl opened the car door and Woolly would shoot out before our feet could touch the ground.

I'd seen him on numerous occasions face off several much larger dogs and back them into a corner. Once, he chased a massive pair of Alsations and had them standing on the top of their kennel whilst he stood guard below. As I intimated previously, the dog was truly bonkers. He would wait in the garden for a mole hill to start appearing (the area was plagued with moles) and then pounce on it, digging furiously to try and catch it.

Anyway, back to the toothache. The morning after arriving in Germany I woke up in the early hours in terrible pain, with the left side of my face on fire. I went to the bathroom and looked at my face which was horribly swollen on the left side where it was hurting. All the upper teeth on that side were loose to the touch and I looked like Quasimodo on a bad day. The pain was something else and being only 12, wasn't sure what to do. My mum was in another bedroom so I just sat on the edge of the bed hoping the pain would go away. Unfortunately it didn't and just grew steadily worse to the point where I tried to pull my loose teeth out with my fingers in the hope of alleviating the pain and pressure in my face.

I struggled through the night and pain until mum woke up. She took one look at my face and went ballistic in the cool, calm way mothers do in an emergency. Now this was back in 1970 and Britain hadn't entered into the EEC yet (as the EU was known back then) because the French were keen to keep the "perfidious English" out of their cozy stitch up of a club with the Germans and didn't want us joining, fearing we would get on far too well with them who they envied and feared in equal measure. As a result there was no form E111 or reciprocal health care scheme and I'm sure my parents had never heard of travel insurance. Back in the late sixties, early seventies, foreign travel wasn't too common and certainly not something working class people like us did regularly. In fact, if my mother hadn't been German with family back home I doubt I would have travelled abroad until I was in my mid twenties.

So, no health cover and one very poorly son. After explaining what had happened in the night, Christine, my mum, made Karl drive us to the nearest  Zahnartz (German for Dentist) in Wesel who had a good look and rummage around in my mouth before going off for a huddled chat with my mother in the corner of the room. Mum came over to me with a worried look on her face and told me I was apparently suffering from Cotton Thread Gangrene in the upper jaw and needed immediate treatment. So far, so good. She then went on to explain that as my face was so swollen there was nowhere for the injections to go in so all the work had to be done without an anaesthetic. OK, I thought, not so good but depending on what happens next, not that bad. The treatment required was to have root canal work done on my front teeth so that antibiotic plugs could be put into the nerve canals and a hole drilled into the roof of my mouth for the infection to drain out. Ah, shit, that was obviously going to hurt a bit, but I reasoned that it couldn't be that much worse then what I was suffering anyway so what the hell. 

Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. Several years later in 1976 a film came out with Dustin Hoffman as the hero, and Laurence Olivier as the Nazi War Criminal who tortured his victims by breaking their teeth in half with pliers. Marathon Man it was called. If anyone has seen that film I expect it was similar to what happened to me except that I have never been able to bring myself to watch it, for obvious reasons. The pain was appalling, only alleviated somewhat once the nerves had been scrapped out of my teeth by long pieces of thin, roughened wire, that she inserted up and down inside the tooth. By the time the hole was made in my mouth I was past caring, living between breaths in a literal sea of pain.

I had a death grip on the chairs armrests and I vividly remember my mother standing in a corner of the room watching this all happen to me. Years later and a parent myself I can only imagine what she went through in having to watch her little boy (alright I was a big twelve year old but to a mum her son will always be a little boy) suffer the agonies of the damned.

After about an hour I was all done, totally exhausted from the experience and just wanted to go and lie down somewhere quiet and alone. By the time we were back at the house I was starting to feel a bit perkier, and with the resilience of youth was soon hungry and looking for some food. The teeth were all still loose to the touch so no steaks but soup was more then acceptable.

What was meant to only be a two week holiday unfortunately ended up as six for Christine had a massive stroke just a few days after my visit to the Dentist. Although it may have been a coincidence, she always said it was the horror of what happened that day which brought it on.

So there I was, twelve years old, in pain, staying with my Aunt and Uncle who couldn't speak English whilst my mum was in intensive care in a German hospital miles away. Talk about being thrown into the deep end. Dad was back in England still working as we didn't have the money for him to go on holiday with us. When he heard the news from my Cousin Hans (more of him later), Bert was so stressed he burst a blood vessel in his eye and went blind on that side for a while.  

On the plus side, my German steadily improved and I made friends with a lovely local girl, Eleonore, who was introduced to me as a companion. She spoke lovely English and we became firm friends, going out after her school finished in the early afternoon. Schools in Germany started early but finished at about two o'clock, giving us plenty of time to explore the surrounding countryside.

Unknown to me the Hospital require paying and as my parents were as poor as Churchmice there was no way they could do so. Step forward Hans who was married to my Cousin Margaret, daughter of Auntie Lilly. He was a very wealthy man who lived in a massive detached property in Erkrath, a suburb of Düsseldorf from where he ran his business empire. For a reason I never knew (but guessed at), during the war Christine had effectively brought up Margaret as if she was her own daughter and he was grateful to step in and pay as a way to say thank you. We never knew any of this at the time and it was only years later we found out about his kindness. Unfortunately I have no photographs of Uncle Hans (as I called him for he was a lot older then me) but I do have lots of very fond memories. There’s a picture above of me mowing the lawn with Margaret in Erkrath. Hans spoke six or seven languages fluently and was a very smart man. He collected stamps and medals and because of his influence I too collected stamps for many years. Hans always wanted me to learn a few languages so that when I left college I could go work with him. Unfortunately I wasnt that smart and not a little lazy so never made the effort.

Several years later on another holiday to Germany, but this time with Bert, we were staying with him and they both got into a heated discussion as to whether you could get drunk on fine, vintage champagne. Hans had a massive wine cellar and the two of them proceeded to put the theory to the test. Too young to join in all I could do was watch them slowly disprove the theory. Whilst not a big drinker,Bert had built up a formidable tolerance for alcohol during the war due to the prevalence of spirits in the Sergeants Mess. He told me once that they used to pool their spirits into a metal bucket, pouring in gin, whiskey, vodka and anything else they could find. They then drunk it out of their mess tins! The picture below shows them drinking a few liberated beers.

Bert’s fourth from right. Picture probably taken in Belgium somewhere, late 1944.

As the weeks went by the toothache gradually faded away to a dull ache and I was able to enjoy myself a bit more. Christine was recovering and my worst fears hadn't been realised. Problem was, Christine was a very stubborn woman who wanted to get home. Although German, she had no intention of dying there and wanted to get back to England and her Bert. The upshot of this was that she discharged herself and arranged a flight back to England without telling anyone. Whilst barely able to stand she somehow got herself to the airport and onto a plane bound for Heathrow. Halfway into the flight she had another stroke and caused a full blown emergency on the plane. You couldn't make this shit up, believe me. No sooner had we landed then we were carried off the plane, Christine on a stretcher, and taken to the hospital wing at Heathrow where poor old Bert was waiting for us having been giving the bad news whilst we were still in the air.

Fast forward several years, perhaps four, and I had a small recurrence of the problem. An abcess appeared half way between my lip and eye, next to the nose. Although only small it oozed pus and had to be treated. My regular Dentist, a lovely Australian dental surgeon called Mr Hing, discovered that it was all linked in to my original problem and decided to operate at his surgery rather then send me off to Hospital. His surgery, on Dagenham Heathway, part way down from what was the Odeon Cinema (alas no longer there) was reached at the top of a steep flight of narrow stairs and consisted of a small waiting area with a small receptionists window and plastic covered bench seats.  Everybody had to wait outside and could hear everything that went on in the treatment room. Conversations, drilling, screams, the lot. At the time the occupants were a few older people and a mother with a young daughter who was somewhat scared and was making quite a fuss about not wanting to go in. Everyone was reassuring her that it didn't hurt and she reluctantly calmed down. I'd already been in for my numbing injections, some ten or twelve if I remember correctly and by the time I was called in I couldn't feel a thing, including my tongue and lips . Why is it that Dentists insist on talking to you when you have a mouthful of steel?

Dagenham Heathway back then

Doctor Hing had to cut through into the bone above my teeth and continued to drill out the infection, seemingly drilling upwards towards the abscess. Chips of bone and blood spattered his glasses and face mask but he kept up a cheerful commentary on what he was doing to take my mind off the drill noise and gory sight reflected in his lenses. I couldn't feel a thing however. All told I was in the chair for about half an hour and after several stitches and a mouthful of cotton wool tubes, was told to get a prescription for antibiotics and pain killers and come back in two weeks time for a check up and the stitches out. Now I’d been in there an awful long time and everyone outside must have been wondering what was going on, what with the constant drilling and chipping away. As I walked though the door everyone looked at me including the little girl. In an attempt at reassurance I smiled at her only to release a load of blood out of my numbed mouth that literally flooded down the corners of my mouth onto my already sodden shirt collar. The poor girl took one look at my bloodied grimace and screamed in horror. Oops, not the smartest thing I've ever done. I also got quite a few states on the tube on the journey home.

One of the side effects of root canal work is that without a nerve the tooth becomes brittle over time and may well eventually break. That's what happened to one of my front teeth after getting bopped in Karate one night, ultimately leading to an implant. But that, along with what happened to Eleonore, Christine and Bert are perhaps a story for another time.

My son, John, is now training to be a Dentist. Perhaps there's a bit of serendipity or circularity in that, or maybe the universe is just having a laugh. At least I'll have someone to look after my teeth when he qualifies. Family and friend rates at the very least, if not the odd freebie. John? Oh all right, cost price then.

After all what happened am I scared of the Dentist or worried about going? Not one bit as I take the view that after what I've had done to my teeth, there's not much more left to do that could freak me out.