Stephen’s World

It is Sunday

Just for those that didn’t know it is Sunday..  I can’t smile my face hurts…

Well had toothache since well Wednesday and it is doing my head in, the whole left side of my face is more than a little painful. Hasn’t swollen up as much as it usually does. Before people tell me to go to the Dentist, alas there is nothing the dentist can do for this other than give me some antibiotics and send me home.

Basically in the summer of 1999 I had a broken tooth, I went to a dentist in London to have it looked at, he put some filling in the tooth to fill the chip, as I’d taken a chip out leaving some of the core exposed. Problem was that the chip was in the side of the tooth and I have quite tightly packed teeth so he forced a gap between the tooth and the one next to it so he could work. In the process he opened a now perm gap between the bone and tooth which every so often something gets in and starts an infection. This work the dentist did eventually killed the two healthy teeth, they both have root fillings now, which are both done with a dentist I trust (my old family dentist, someone who has looked after my teeth well for maybe 26 years).

I’ve long since come to the conclusion that some dentists really don’t give a shit about your teeth. For instance my family dentist never put any pressure on my to have braces to straighten my teeth, why because my teeth are a. healthy b. straightening them is not going to give me any benefit other than having straight teeth. Where as recently we took our daughter Kristina to a dentist in London to remove a ‘baby’ tooth that was giving her problems first thing he said was she needed braces. Firstly she doesn’t, why all her adult teeth where not in she still had 3 baby teeth to lose, secondly at the moment her teeth are straight so why go to the expense and pain of doing braces? Another was just before Christmas 2004 my father when to see an emergency dentist, the dentist did some work and in the process changed the bite in his mouth despite my father insisting that they do not do this. What happened resulted in my father having a problem over Christmas including a abscess, the change in bite put pressure on a tooth at the front which resulted in something getting into a gap created by the movement of a tooth and then getting infected. I think he will lose a healthy tooth as a result.

When you find a good ‘old school’ dentist keep hold of him, because any dentist that qualified after about 1980 will probably attempt to push a lot of unnecessary work on you or just not listen and in the end cause more problems than they fix. After all it is your mouth you have to live with it, you know it best, the dentist maybe sees you once every 6 months, therefore he knows little about how your mouth works, how you bite, where the pressure is handled on your teeth, etc…