My parents both had false teeth. My mother had all her teeth taken out one winter afternoon. I can remember her huddled by the electric fire with a small bowl of blood beside her, mourning their loss. It was a loss not just of teeth but of youth. She can’t have been much over 40.
Because of her I feel rather proud of the fact that I’ve managed to hang on to mine. I tell this to my dentist, Marcus. He’s not impressed. I should have guessed by my stint watching the video in the waiting room of a blonde whitening her teeth and smiling. Just hanging on to them isn’t quite good enough. I haven’t had mine straightened, realigned or veneered. I haven’t had ‘a smile make-over’. Actually, I have rather large teeth. I’d quite like them reduced, like they reduce breasts – but I don’t mention this to Marcus. He might take me at my word. He’s already warning me about what he calls ‘Turkey teeth’.
Turkey teeth? Welcome to the world of dental tourism. Apparently, lots of people (celebrities, the rich, the desperate?) go to Turkey where dentistry is cheaper and where there are smile design dentists. Marcus describes having the bottom of your teeth shaved off then new porcelain pieces tacked on to the stubs. That’s the least of it. When I Google, I find that for £5,900 you can have ‘full mouth’ treatment (both rows of teeth plus four implants and crowns), including flights and five days in a hotel. Such a holiday! Marcus says that the term ‘Turkey teeth’ is slang for botched dental treatment and that it’s one thing for your treatment to go wrong when your dentist is just round the corner but quite another if it involves a flight back to Turkey. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some exceedingly successful Turkey teeth.
I can’t remember when I gave up trying to find an NHS dentist and went private. I realise today, at my regular six-month appointment, that I must be a very boring patient. I haven’t had a filling or a tooth out for at least five years. My teeth do look rather yellow but I’m so old nobody suggests whitening and at home we’re too mean to buy the expensive toothpaste.
A few days after my appointment I meet a friend just back from a holiday in Istanbul. She knows about Turkey teeth. She tells me that Turkey’s proud of its medical accomplishments
The waiting room at the dentist’s is large enough to host a baby grand piano and I suggest this to Marcus, but I can see it doesn’t appeal. The room has a couple of sofas, the video about smiling and snoring (they can deal with that too), a mini palm tree and magazines. I’m extremely pleased to see that magazines are back. During lockdown, this waiting room was so bleak I actually cried. I’m a little disappointed that the magazines are such traditional dentist-type magazines – National Geographic, Scottish Field, Good Housekeeping. I find myself yearning for the Sun, but settle for penguins in the Geographics. I can’t help thinking of Elizabeth Bishop’s wonderful ‘In the Waiting Room’ poem told as if by a child who, while reading the National Geographic (February 1918), hears an ‘oh of pain’ from her aunt in the surgery and suddenly discovers she’s part of the human race, ‘an Elizabeth’, ‘one of them’.
There are three surgeries in this dental practice and I reason either the surgeries must be soundproofed or, hopefully, that all three dentists are so brilliant that there’s never an ‘oh’ of pain.
Actually, I do remember having a tooth out and afterwards suffering from what they call a dry socket – which was more a howl than an oh of pain. But that was then. This afternoon is just a check-up preceded by a session with the hygienist. Betty is new. She’s accompanied by a nurse who I saw in the hall cleverly watching her computer and iPhone simultaneously. The previous hygienist used handheld scrapers and prodders and the like. Betty uses ultrasonic. It’s noisy and wet and I protest. ‘It’s the modern way,’ says Betty. Mopping my face I try and suggest that ‘modern’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘better’.
Smiling my yellow tooth smile, I pay Max at the desk, buy a packet of interdental brushes, book an appointment for six months’ time and – £160 lighter but oh so clean and bright – make my shining way home, very glad I don’t have to go to Turkey this year. At least not for my teeth.
A few days after my appointment I meet a friend just back from a holiday in Istanbul. She knows about Turkey teeth. She tells me that Turkey’s proud of its medical accomplishments, cornering the market on self-enhancement. ‘It’s not just teeth,’ she says, ‘It’s hair implants. Bottoms.’ I decide not to pursue the subject.
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