All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

So recently I needed to visit a dentist. The gums around my back molar started swelling to such an extent that it was affecting my intake of food, which led to a loss of appetite which led to the fantastic realization that I might loose a few kilos. That was the upside of dealing with a throbbing jaw. The downside was I couldn’t pop down to the local Medi Cross Centre and flick through a 5 year old copy of Fair Lady missing the back page with smells of novacane wafting around the waiting room before a man in a white coat could cause more pain and take all my money.

I had three options. One; an overnight trip to East London to see a dentist who would probably take ex-rays and charge exorbitant fees for his services. Two; a trip to Butterworth to a Chinese dentist who the locals here recommended but who I had reservations about since I didn’t know what to expect. Three; a visit to the local igqirha (medicine woman) who I was told by a village teacher treated toothache by dripping juice of a certain bush down a smoking twig into the problematic tooth cavity. I didn’t have a whole lot of money for option 1 or an actual hole in my tooth to be filled the African homeotherapy style remedy so I settled on option 2.

The bike trip to Butterworth took my mind off my throbbing jaw and in fact my whole body shuddered so much I thought the trip might be fruitless as I feared the molar, which had slightly loosened over the past few days, would fall out of its own accord by the time we arrived. The combination of our old 550 XT Thumper which has seen better days and the gravel road to Centane which is deteriorating badly makes for a horribly bumpy ride. I can’t make the full 15 km’s without having to stop a couple of times and get off the now seemingly shockless bouncing back tire, stretch my aching semi metal knee, wipe the oil which leaks from the engine onto my shoe causing my foot to continually slide off the footpeg and finally realign my bifocal glasses and wedge them back into my helmet at the correct angle so that when I arrive at my destination I don’t have a headache from vision which alternates between near and far sightedness at the speed of the bikes piston, causing me to be more squint than usual.

From Centane to Butterworth the 17 km's of tar is smoother but by then the damage was done to my body so I sat on the back and tried not to think about the dentist visit which I dreaded. I focused on keeping my lower jaw stretched as far away from my top jaw as possible to give my teeth a rest from the hour of clamping they had been through which is a good way to prevent your tongue being bitten when your body vibrates at that speed but the enamel coating on my teeth is wearing thin. I also had to focus on not actually opening my mouth while doing this as I didn’t want to scare the dentist by presenting him with squashed bugs all over my pearlys.

We arrived at the Chinese dentist and I took a seat in the sparsely furnished waiting room with a dozen or so other patients while Theo went shopping. The friendly Xhosa women all chatted away around me and after 4 hours, I’d picked up the rhythm of how things worked at this dentist surgery. By then I’d poked my head into the room next door since there wasn’t a receptionist, where the friendly Dr Chang and his Chinese assistant, who was probably his wife, asked about the tooth and after a quick exchange of hand signs, their limited English and me trying to talk with my mouth open for him to see my swollen gum from the doorway, I returned to the waiting room for the long haul.

An old Xhosa man directed people from the surgery room to the bathroom at the back of the building where you rinsed your mouth but generally people seemed to know where to go. The patients seemed to be business people and chatted away except those who came out of the surgery room. They sat clutching tissues against their lower faces, waiting for the injection to kick in while the dentist peered into the next patient’s mouth in his surgery. My turn eventually arrived and the dentist told me that it was too late to save the tooth and that after pulling it, the huge abscess would drain by itself. I settled back in the waiting room for about 10 minutes after a quick trip to the back bathroom to rinse my mouth and squeezed past the generator for a quick pee. Just as the drool was about to run down my chin, escaping the provided tissue, I was called back in to have the job finished. The dentist had a lovely jaw side manner and put my mind at rest before the extraction which wasn’t half as bad as I’d expected. I’d once nearly punched a dentist who hurt me. It was an instinctive action as my clenched hand automatically shot out when he carelessly groped around in my mouth with his sharp tools. He was not a nice dentist at all. This guy was totally different and in fact afterwards we even tried chatting although it was really difficult since by then, we not only had a language barrier but my limp mouth made it impossible for me to articulate coherently. I paid my R100 and left, relieved and with a lopsided grin.

The trip going back wasn’t so bad as my body seemed to be more relaxed, from the adrenaline surge probably or maybe because I rode half the way with my leg stuck out straight but we still stopped just as many times for me to spit mouthfuls of blood out and to replace the surgical wad which I was biting down on with a fresh one tucked away in pocket which the dentist's wife had sent me home with.

That’s a dentist I don’t mind going back to but if I do get a cavity and the Igqirha is off duty, I’ll try a recently recommended option by a woman who said her parents treated their farm labourer's tooth aches by sticking a hair dryer nozzle into their mouth to dry it, followed by a blob of quick set Pratley putty pressed into the hole.

Hopefully I won’t need to look for my hair dryer stuck in a cupboard in the truck any time soon. My appetite is also back so the 2 kg's I thought I'd lost have found their way back to my middle again. Oh well.