Previously, I’ve written about my dental trauma, following an encounter with a particularly malevolent slice of pepperoni pizza. Almost one year to the day later, I was ambushed once more. Yet again, the enemy was not hard candy, beef jerky, walnuts or pork scratchings – this time, it was the soft, gently yielding dough of a keema naan. As before, I bit down, heard a crack, and felt a hole, this time in an upper-right molar, where no hole has any right to be.

Two teeth down, 30 to go – at that steady rate of (literal) decay, by the year 2033, I’m going to have no teeth left at all. Since I’ll only be 67 at that point, this was a little worrying. And worse was to come; a check-up revealed no less than six other teeth in need of filling. Two sessions would be required to do all the work necessary – one for the left side, one for the right. I feel wronged by this, having brushed my teeth religiously every single day, and can only blame my frequent consumption of fizzy pop. Diet or not, it’s still clearly capable of rotting your teeth…

Sonja, our dentist, is pretty much as caring and sympathetic as one could wish for. Chris tells me that after an appointment with our daughter, Sonja was reduced to tears. “She’s so brave!” sniffled the white-coated one, as Emily’s lip quivered courageously. But it doesn’t matter how sensitive she is, I still hate the bitch. Nothing personal, of course: it’s just a Pavlovian reflex, the inevitable result when every encounter with her leads to pain and suffering. Just like my high-school girlfriend, in fact. Except with less poetry. And a diet of soup…

The weirdest part of the first session was when they stapled some kind of rubber sheet to my palate, for reasons I was unable to ask about – mostly because they’d stapled some kind of rubber sheet to my palate. After 90 minutes of having that, dental tools and fingers crammed into my mouth, I felt like Jenna Jameson after a particularly strenuous shoot. You hear about people who claim to have had radio devices implanted inside their teeth – I think Sonja had enough equipment in there to install an entire station, DJs and all.

I’m now partway through the torture: four fillings down, two to go, so the worst should be over. Certainly, hard to see how it could be much more unpleasant. However, I did hear the two words that strike more fear into dental patients than perhaps any others: “r**t c*n*l” – I dare not speak its name in full, for fear of bringing it on. One of the fillings was so deep, it ended up being a cap, pending crowning when the dental insurance finally kicks in. Even that might not do it, hence the possible need for an R.C.

Hang on, that’s three teeth down in 13 months – bringing my projected age of toothlessness down to a revised figure of 49. Ulp. That’s why part of my psyche is whispering maliciously that this is just the thin end of the wedge, as far as my body falling apart is concerned. Wonder how long it’ll be, before those spam emails I receive daily, advertising ‘V_IAGRA’, are no longer deleted without a thought? 🙁

Sonia said to call her if there was any throbbing or aching – however, she was somewhat vague on how to separate this from the throbbing or aching caused by getting three fillings and a cap in one session. Or the subsequent throbbing/aching whenever I eat anything more than five degrees above or below room temperature. The good news is, this seems to be subsiding nicely, in time for the holiday season to mean more than mashed potatoes and gravy. Though it would give me a good to excuse to avoid the fruitcake – not that any is ever really necessary there…