My front tooth

Today, after the tutorial, I went to the dental hospital to see my flatmate Maxsood who's a student dentist there. This was the 3rd meeting with him so far. The first time, which was 3 weeks ago, he gave me a preliminary inspection of my teeth, and then gave an oral report to his supervisor there.

His supervisor was a Scottish woman dentist/professor. She treated Max as if he was already a fully qualified dentist. She listened to his presentation (in front of me) attentively, and fired series of questions at Max about my condition. "What do you think of that?" "Why do you think so?" "What would you recommend to do?" Max simply couldn't have the time to think and hence seemed a bit cautious in answering her questions. At last she said to him, "You're supposed to have confidence in presenting your patients. You should guide your examiner to the issues that you think important at hand. But you paused a lot and seemed uncertain in your diagnosis. Lucky you to have me as your examiner. If you were examined by someone from London, you would have failed straight away."

In all honesty I think she was too severe in her assessment of a student dentist. Afterall, Max was only in his 4th year in dental study. I felt embarrassed for Max because I didn't think it's fair to him to receive such rebukes from his supervisor in front of his patient.

At the end, it was Max himself who came to comfort me. He said, "Well, she was not getting personal at me. She does it to everybody else. If I'd mind her remarks that much, I wouldn't have been able to survive so far." When I left the dental hospital 3 weeks ago, Max saw me off to the X-ray room. His remarks on her finally came out, "Oh, she's such a bitch!"

The second appointment took place last week. I went there because Max wanted to follow up with my X-ray photo. He pointed out that one of my molars was infected (no wonder I felt local pain on my cheek) and suggested either a root-canal operation or extraction. Neither option was what I desired. He asked another supervisor -- this time it was a younger guy, who seemed to agree with Max about the diagnosis AND the proposed treatment. When Max saw my reluctant face, he decided to seek a second opinion. This time, again, he sought the expertise of the woman dentist supervisor.

She remembered me alright, and inspected my X-ray negative attentively. She said that a root-canal wasn't urgently in need. She turned to look at me, and having noticed my reluctance to lose my tooth. said to Max, "See? Your patient doesn't want it to be extracted. And it isn't that necessary either. You should take your patient's will into consideration as well." Anyway, she volunteered to ask for a second opinion from her peer -- an old gentleman who obviously was in charge of the entire dental ward there. She beckoned him to come over to my chair, and briefly presented my case to him. That gentleman concurred that while a root canal operation could solve the problem once and for all, it wasn't that necessary in my case then.

Finally, Max agreed to chart my teeth only for that day and decided to refer me to an oral hygienist for a scaling the following week. He asked me to come to the dental hospital for the 3rd time.

So I turned up at the dental hospital this afternoon, expecting to have my teech scaled by the oral hygienist. Surprise, surprise! Max had instead arranged to do a small operation on my front tooth this afternoon. I wasn't psychologically prepared for such task and so I was a bit apprehensive about it.

I have had a broken front tooth since I was 8 or 9 years old. I can still remember how I broke my front tooth (a permanent tooth): I was playing on a slide one late afternoon in a playground after school. There was a child who was before me. She slid down first and I was following her. At the end of the slide, she didn't get up to clear the pathway. Instead she just lied there. When I was beginning to slide down, I didn't want to kick her in the back. But I couldn't stop the momentum either despite I tried hard to grasp both sides of the slide. As a result, my upper trunk spurred forward and I felt my teeth firmly hit her skull. In an instant there was full blood in my mouth as well as her head at the back. I ran home quickly, but I'd already lost a corner of my front tooth.

Of course I regretted breaking my front tooth. Back then, my parents weren't that affluent enough then to have it fixed for me so the broken front tooth stayed with me for almost 4 decades. Now, all of a sudden, I found myself lying in a dental chair, trying hard to persuade myself to let a student dentist work on it (probably for his first time ever).

Was I anxious about the whole operation? You bet I was! But judging from the skillfulness and dexterity of Max's hands -- he was not being assisted at all by any dental nurse throughout the entire operation-- I couldn't tell whether it was his first time or not to do such cosmetic operation alone. Anyway, after an hour-long session with my front tooth, he finished the job and proudly presented me with a mirror to let me see for myself. I couldn't believe my eyes. It looked so natural that I just couldn't detect that there was ever any alien material attached to my broken front tooth.

After inspecting my tooth for a while, I congratuled Max: "Hi, doctor. That's a job well done. But you forgot one thing."

Max was shocked. "What?" his eyes above the mask revealed his anxiety.

"You should have taken a photo of my tooth before the operation," said I. "Then you could offer your patient a before-and-after comparison."

He laughed heartily.

"Oh yes," I said, "I mean it. It's good for your credentials too!"

I told Max that it's a 100-quid work, or possibly worth 500 guids given that the result was so good and looked so natural. He was very pleased. And I was very glad to have him as my dentist.