Doing the Rounds

I know I’ve been quiet lately. I’ve been pretty under the weather all week. I took the day off on Wednesday to do some medical stuff. On Tuesday I managed to trap my fingers in a bin, punch myself in the face with my desk phone and spill the soil and water from a plant all over my desk, so I was probably due a sanity day. I spent it doing the rounds at various medical establishments.

First, I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. It was my first visit to this dentist and I liked him. He said I take very good care of my teeth, and I know I do, but it’s always nice to hear from the professionals! Particularly as dentists always say stuff like “Oh my goodness, there’s so much crowding in here!” which is always humiliating. Actually, he did say that. But I talked over some options with him for braces, so I might be going ahead with that after Christmas, if there’s any money left after my trip to England.

It was good to hear that. I actually went to an orthodontist a few months ago. I decided that now I’m all grown up and earn money and stuff, I was finally going to do something about my teeth so that I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed about going to the dentist any more, and could smile like Burt Reynolds. It was a bit of a disaster. There was this ghastly woman; I’m not sure exactly what her job was; I don’t think she was the receptionist or a nurse. She seemed to run the place and even rule the orthodontist himself, on sheer willpower. ‘Publicist’ is the closest thing I could think of. She was all gushy and pushy, and whatever the orthodontist said – when he could get a word in – she repeated, only with three times as much force and gushiness.

The upshot of the visit was that I was going to have a couple of teeth knocked out in the bottom row then an operation to move my lower jaw forward after the braces. It would be great, she said. I could take my year’s holiday allowance from work and spend it recovering from this major jaw operation!

I backed slowly out of the office, smiling (with my hand covering my mouth, of course!) and never went back. I decided I would continue to live with my teeth the way they are. But the thing is, I felt a lot worse about them after I’d been to this orthodontist, having seen the very unflattering 3D pictures, heard the words ‘cross-bite’ and ‘overhang’ flying around over my head and the gushy woman going “I can’t believe you can even close your mouth with teeth like that!!” (I should point out that they’re not that bad. I mean, I’m not a freak or anything). There's nothing like the sound of a thoughtful "Hmmmmm" coming out of a dentist's mouth to make my spirits plummet.

This new dentist looked faintly surprised when I told him about the jaw operation thing, and said it was pretty old-fashioned to go around knocking teeth out and doing operations, not unless it was a really extreme case. So thank God for that!

On Wednesday I also went to the local clinic, finally, about my rash. But I got this weird guy who certainly didn’t look like a doctor, didn’t speak much English, and appears to have been told by someone that in the West, you don’t have to worry about etiquette – anything goes! I think he was trying to be cool. But he creeped me out and I felt distinctly embarrassed when he told me to take down my jeans. Then he told me he was referring me to a dermatologist, blah blah blah (indecipherable talking), which is great, because obviously I can take day after day off from work to hang around in doctors’ surgeries. Guess I’ll have to cure myself. Back to Google search!

Finally, I visited a physio who’d been recommended to me, but she turned out not to be a physio at all, but something a lot more hippy, and she referred me on to someone else. Sigh. The most notable thing about that visit is that I got lost on the way there and ended up in a mental hospital!