NOBODY likes going to the dentist.
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The sound of the drill is enough to send many people scrambling out the waiting room.
Poor old dentists are probably more disliked than politicians.
And that’s saying something.
The take-home message here is if you need to visit the dentist, it’s rarely for something good.
Crack a tooth? Dentist. Rotted molar? Dentist. Crooked teeth? Dentist. Gum disease? Dentist.
I had the displeasure of seeing a dentist for two years of my life when I was a teenager.
Getting braces was a distressing time for me as I was 15 and image was everything.
Braces weren’t cool or clear back in the ’90s – they were horrible metal train tracks that sent people reeling back whenever you smiled at them.
For the first week I had them in, I didn’t speak to anyone and ate my lunch in the bathroom, I was so mortified.
Yet getting braces wasn’t even my first traumatic trip to the dentist.
At the tender age of five, I was reluctantly taken to the dentist for a filling.
The dentist was so rude and judgmental to my mother, he made her cry.
His terrible bedside manner was just as bad as his handiwork, poking and prodding me with such force, I started bawling.
He was so dreadful he would have given the sadistic, gas-sucking dentist from Little Shop of Horrors a run for his money.
“Make her shut up,” he snapped at my mother, or rather “få hende til at holde kæf” because we were in Denmark.
It was a scarring exchange – mother crying, me bawling and cringing and him yelling at everyone. Yep, I was always going to be happy in the dentist’s chair.
Fast forward to 2020 and now I am the mother and feeling as if I was leading a lamb to the slaughter as I was taking 10-year-old Maya to the dentist.
So, we head into Campaspe Dental where Tony Lee's calm and gentle nature puts Maya (and me) at ease.
Until he pulls out a gigantic looking needle to numb her mouth.
I nearly fall off my chair but thankfully Maya is too busy chatting away while looking straight ahead.
Tony tells her she'll feel a sharp scratch and then her mouth will start to feel a bit funny, so I am poised to leap up and grab her, certain this is the point Maya realises what's going on and tries to take off.
To my surprise she doesn't, because she is too busy slurring her words around the syringe, Tony’s fingers and the assistant’s sucking thingummy to maintain her running dialogue.
After what seems an eternity, the needle is finally withdrawn and Maya, who is taking this so much better than I am, keeps right on chattering while metal bits, plastic guards and other foreign material are packed into her mouth so she doesn’t accidentally swallow something.
Even cotton rolls jammed between cheek and gum don’t slow her; they just ensure her non-stop soliloquy becomes unintelligible.
But her ears were still working normally as she preened under the praise being heaped on her by Tony and his assistant, praising her for doing such a great job, which she would have thrived on. She’s a people pleaser.
Finally, they were done – and so was I.
But Maya wasn’t.
“The cotton roll is still in my mouth,” she protested.
“No, Maya it just feels like that because your mouth is numb,” Tony explained.
“Are you sure?” Maya probed.
“I’m sure,” Tony confirmed.
This topic was batted to and fro while I marvelled as the realisation dawned on me – I needed wild horses to drag me into a dentist and now I was looking for anyone or anything to help me drag Maya out of the dentist’s chair.
At which point the assistant looked at me and asked if I wanted to book in for a check-up.
And that’s when Maya had to leap out of the chair and grab me as I started to bolt for the door screaming “få hende til at holde kæf” – or "make her shut up", because we were in Australia.
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