The story of my teeth

When I was eight years old I had a bicycle incident. It wasn’t spectacular. I was cycling a bit on the sidewalk when I made a manoeuvre which made my front wheel turn too far and block my forward motion full stop, resulting in me getting to know the non-plasticity of the pavement. The unlucky fact was that I landed on my nose and mouth, resulting in two broken front teeth. Two halves were missing and despite thorough search my parents couldn’t locate the missing parts.

I was only 8 so what I remember of what happened next must be seen in that light.

It must have been either a weekend or during the evening, because when we called for an emergency appointment at the dentist we were directed to a different dentist than we normally had. I was brought in and the only visual memory I have is of people wearing mouthpieces bending over me in low-light condition. It felt scary. In terms of repair they didn’t do too much to my teeth. Relatively speaking the damage was moderate. If only we would have found the broken halves, they could have glued it back on and that would have been it. Allas.

After the emergency repair session with the unfamiliar dentist we were told to make an appointment with our family dentist for proper repair. Which is what happened. It was a long session and my first acquaintance with needles stuck in my mouth, hurting in a very nasty way. My front teeth were rebuilt with white filling, which should last for several years, hopefully untill my 18th so that they could be replaced with crowns.

Now what you have to know is that I didn’t like, trust nor felt comfortable around our family dentist. I would describe him as the typical cynic baby-boomer, in his (late?)forties (very old from my point of view).

Four years after the first heavy operation on my teeth, the fillings needed replacements. At twelve I had to undergo the whole process again. The needles, 10 minutes in the waiting room waiting for the anaesthetics to work (doesn’t happen anymore these days), people putting stuff in my mouth without telling me what they were doing, spotlight, masks, drilling, sucking. I now know that it takes an hour, which must have felt neverending back then.

I clearly remember that at one point my dentist was doing something that hurt me. I must have moaned, because I got a response from him: “Oh, does that hurt little girl?” (in Dutch: “Ach, deed dat zeer meisje?”). Written down it looks like a normal response, but it was the way he said it that made me want to flee on the spot. I interpreted it as a cynical, not meant, condescending remark.

That’s the point from where my relationship with dentists in general went downhill. More and more I dreaded appointments for regular check-up. The only reason I went was because my mother made me. My last appointment was the year I graduated from high-school, aged 18. Then I went off to university and never looked for a new dentist in my new home town, even though my front teeth discoloured more and more.

I remember once in the early phase of my psychological treatment (I was 21), one of the psychologists asked me whether having discoulered teeth affected my self-esteem, or whether kids pestered me with it. I had never thought about it in that way nor experienced specific bullying, so the only answer I could give was that having these not so pretty teeth was the one thing that had never bothered me much. Being in familiar circles, first at primary school, then secondary and later at university it was just a matter of explaining once to people who asked what happened and then people knew. Many of my friends told me that once they got to know me they didn’t even notice my teeth any longer.

That changed a few years ago. After I left university I started noticing that I met more and more people only once. I saw people looking, judging and not daring to ask what was wrong with my teeth. I had to admit it was starting to bug me. For the first time in my life I started to feel ashamed about my teeth. And then I was confronted with my fear for dentists.

Just to give you an idea how my fear had grown over the years. As you may know I’m a coach at my fencing club. We often have new kids joining the club. During a tournament I got into a conversation with some of the parents. One man was relatively new in the group, his son joined a few months earlier. At one point during that conversation we came to talk about our professions and I found out that this man was a dentist. I got sweaty palms at the spot and wanted to distance myself from him.

That was the moment that I knew I had to deal with this issue. I started talking about my fear. What helped was that a friend confessed that he was in a similar position and at that time faced his fears and actually visited the dentist again. After some time (maybe a year) I started to ask around whether someone knew a good dentist in my hometown who could give special attention to my fears. After some pointers to dentists that I didn’t follow up, I got an address from a colleague that sounded right. I called for a first appointment, explained my situation and ended up with a lovely young, female dentist, specialised in treating children and ‘fear-patients’.

That was one year ago. There was a lot to do, besides my front teeth. The whole process of filling wholes, cleaning up, getting rid of wisdom teeth (ouch!) was leading up to one promise of my new dentist: white front teeth. And today was that day. As of today I have white teeth again:

Even though visits to my dentist were so regular this year, I still get nervous the day of the appointment. But thanks to her being very communicative and reassuring, anaesthetic (it’s not the needles that scare me) and progressed techniques, I at last have overcome my fears and can now start doing the yearly check-up.