My Dentist Shamed Me
And not because of my teeth
I’m not a typical Brit in many ways — I don’t drink tea, I have no affinity for the royal family, and I have really really good teeth.
But I admit it, I’ve been putting off going to the dentist for about five years. Not because I have a particular phobia of dentists, in fact, my encounters with them have always been brief and uneventful — I’ve never even had a filling.
Indeed, perhaps that’s why I was so afraid to go after neglecting my teeth for so long. In all honesty, I was terrified that opening my mouth to a dentist would unleash a Pandora’s box of cavities, plaque and gum disease. Or that they would pin me to the chair and force me to have my (somehow still emerging at age 35) wisdom teeth removed.
Due to these possibly somewhat irrational fears, coupled with moving cities a handful of times and eventually moving countries, as well as a general tendency to procrastinate with life admin, dentistry was low on my list of priorities.
Until, that is, I got pregnant. Suddenly I had bleeding gums and my gynaecologist asking me every appointment if I had had a dental checkup. I said no, using the threat of corona as a convenient excuse. She nodded sympathetically. Most women in my situation wanted to reduce their risk of exposure. I wasn’t the only one shirking appointments.
But the baby’s 3 months old now so I have no excuse. Maybe I can still use breastfeeding to get out of any major interventions, I thought. I took the plunge and booked the appointment.
The reception area was decorated with framed newspaper clippings praising my chosen dentist’s state of the art equipment and pioneering extraction technique. There were awards and certificates lining the walls of the waiting room. So far, so good. At least if he did insist on ripping all my teeth out, he would do it with panache.
Now, I’ve been shamed by professionals who should know better before. There was the hairdresser who thought my psoriasis was headlice and decided it was necessary to shout across the busy salon to her colleague to check. Or the doctor who chose not to run a test for coeliac disease because I ‘didn’t look like I ate a lot of cake anyway.’ So, if my teeth were in as bad a state as I feared, I was expecting I might be made to feel a little uncomfortable.
What I hadn’t expected though was that this supposedly hot-shot dentist would display overt sexism, and shame me for my parenting decisions before he’d even said hello.
“Where’s the baby?” he asked, no doubt referring to the mention of my recent pregnancy on the registration form.
“Oh, he’s at home with his dad.” I breezed, smiling behind my mask. Middle-aged German guys can be abrupt sometimes, and their sense of humour doesn’t always hit the mark. He’s probably just trying to establish a rapport, I told myself.
“That’s… unusual,” he declared, eyebrow raised, signalling me into the chair.
I wondered as I removed my mask, is it really that unusual to leave a 3 month old napping at home with his other parent whilst attending to one’s own medical needs? Should I have brought him along to lie screaming in the pram he hates just to prove I’m not fabricating his existence, or worse, relying on his father to support me in caring for him? How dare I presume to take care of my own health needs when I have a baby!
Perhaps I should have expressed this outrage directly, but it’s hard to express much outrage when a strange man has his tools in your mouth.
He checked my teeth briskly, declared everything fine aside from some hormone related inflammation that a good clean would take care of.
“Do you floss?” he asked.
I looked at him nonplussed — not being a German native speaker, the word for dental floss was a new one on me. He rolled his eyes, threw a length of the stuff at me and flounced out of the room, leaving his (much younger, female) assistant to usher me out, making apologetic eyes from behind her mask.
Needless to say, I will not be going back.
