Open Wide!

My Trip to the Dentist by Megan Feenstra Wall (that just somehow feels appropriate)

England doesn’t feel that different to me. I forget on a daily basis that I am a foreigner, and I experience a little thrill when I remember. I am reminded when my co-workers open their mouths to speak and when I try to cross the street only to be forced a few more meters down the road by the maze-like fencing that prevents a wayward pedestrian like myself from crossing in a straight line anywhere near the intersection. The fact that I have to work on Thursday (Thanksgiving) also reinforces my foreign-ness. But often I forget.

My visit to the dentist last week reminded me that things don’t work the same everywhere. If you want to feel like your mouth is a well-kept secret, go to a British dentist. However, if you want to feel like it’s going to stay that way, I’d suggest you look further afield.

Read the rest...I had heard that children under 18 got free dental care in England, along with pregnant women and women with a child under the age of one. That so impressed me that I was willing to dismiss the English bad teeth stereotype as part of a bygone era. Well, it wasn’t much more than a week after we’d arrived when I was given a chance for first-hand scrutiny. Somehow, my tongue noticed that a tooth far back in my mouth had changed. No longer smooth, its jagged edge felt suspiciously like a missing filling. While it didn’t hurt, I began to worry about a newly exposed cavity in my mouth. So, now in the land of free healthcare but notorious for its bad teeth, I needed a dentist.

It took 11 phone calls. The first seven dentists I called were not taking new patients, through the National Health System (NHS) or privately. One receptionist told me I could go on the private patients’ waiting list, and I might get an appointment in a little over two months. Many asked me if I was in pain. I thought they were just being polite.

I called the university health centre to ask for advice and was given a new number to try. This 9th call was to an NHS dental help line. From there I was given a list of four more dentists within 20 miles who were probably not taking patients- “But why don’t you at least try?” I was also told that if I was in pain I could go to the emergency dental surgery. That just didn’t feel necessary, and I wasn’t sure what it would cost.

The tenth call failed, but the 11th finally proved successful. The very first question I was asked (before I’d even explained my situation) was if I was in pain. Apparently pain is an indication of your dental importance. While the dentist wasn’t accepting new patients, he would see me this one time. If I was missing a filling, we would schedule a second appointment. Basically, if he liked me, he could decide to put me on his patient waitlist, and it was possible that in six months time I could be a regular patient. I took the first available appointment with a sigh of relief. I didn’t need a regular dentist.

The woman on the phone told me you couldn’t miss the dentistry. It was over an optician’s office about a half hour walk away. Right; you can miss anything with English directions. Roads change names on a block to block, even a side of the street, basis. I walked past it twice before I noticed the optician’s. No dentist, though. After an older man came out from a plain blue door next to the windows of eyeglasses, I crossed the street to check it out. Sure enough, a tiny plaque on the door said Dental Surgery.

I proceeded up the stairs to a tiny room with well-touched, once-white walls to register. I read a pamphlet about the NHS dental system while I waited on a rather battered pale green chair. As the woman on the phone had told me after some prompting, regular check ups and cleanings were part of a first band of service costing 15 pounds. If further work like a filling was needed, then you moved up to the second band which was somewhere around 40. I figured that $30 wasn’t bad for a teeth cleaning. An elderly man came to sit beside me.

A patient, an older woman, walked out of a thin sliding door immediately adjacent to the receptionist’s desk, and I was called up. I had assumed that the door went somewhere, the first of many wrong assumptions in that office. It instead led to a room just big enough for fairly modern dental equipment within spitting distance of the reception desk, which was visible through an open second sliding door. I think it was intended to be part of the reception. I sat down on the chair, and the dentist asked me when I'd last had my teeth cleaned (a year ago) and if I’d experienced anything unusual lately. I explained that I was afraid I’d lost a filling. Let’s have a look, he said with an eastern European accent. He asked me to lie back, apologizing for the state of the office. We are under renovation, he said. (Where? I thought.)

He then proceeded to do that new patient thing where he listed notable items like fillings and receding gums with a cryptic sequence of tooth numbers that the dental hygienist (the second receptionist, it turns out) scribbled down. As he went, the tone of his voice seemed to change. He had seemed surprised at me initially, as if young women were not his typical clientele. Then as he went from tooth to tooth, his tone grew more and more impressed. With each tap and poke, he seemed to gain a genuine sense of wonder at my mouth, as if he’d been granted a special gift that day, a mouth finally worthy of attention. He even chuckled at one point.

When he was done, he had me sit back up and said that what I had thought was a missing cavity was nothing of concern. I had had sealants put on my teeth when I was probably a young teenager and one of them was chipped. He could reseal it, but he didn’t think it was at all necessary. “I would recommend no further treatment,” he said. “Your hygiene is excellent.” He said this last bit three times.

Excellent. Huh. I have a few fillings. My teeth are straight, thanks to adolescent orthodontics, but have moved back slightly. They are more off-white than white. I rarely floss. I left my mother-in-law’s dentist in Iowa last year feeling like my gums were receding at an alarming rate and my teeth would probably fall out before I was 60 if I didn’t start flossing soon.

This dentist handed me my bag and opened the sliding door. What? That was it? In my confusion, he ushered me out with almost with a sense of regret that he couldn’t look at my teeth longer. He gave me one last look of admiration before turning around and sliding the door back shut. The name of the elderly man who had come in after me was called.

"Fifteen pounds please," the first receptionist said. "For that? " I asked involuntarily. She didn’t understand my annoyance. In the end I left without paying because they wouldn’t have a credit card machine until after the renovation. I just got a letter yesterday reminding me I owe them. If he hadn’t been officially listed by the NHS, I would have wondered about that. Perhaps I could have argued for a teeth cleaning if I'd been more alert and less puzzled, but after all that, why bother? My teeth are a fine specimen, and my dental hygiene is excellent!