Tooth hurty

Well, Cat had to go back to the dentist yesterday for her permanent crown - to a tooth (in case you envisaged her in a tiara!) - and she was fairly freaked about the prospect, so I went with her, & to drive her home. Just as well, as, while the process went painlessly, she was quite quite stoned on all the anaesthetics, and would have been a total menace behind the wheel.

Of course she spent all last night suffering as the numbing wore off, and the pain bit, but it seems to have largely passed off overnight, except for the usual bruises on nerves, where the injections went in, and so on.

It did make me ponder childhood dentistry tho - particularly those dreadful clinics we got dragged off to, in intermediate school, where the trainee dental nurses got to practice on us. With old, blunt, slow drills, and no anaesthetic, and partly-trained nurses - jesus, what on earth were they thinking? (the great They, who make decisions, in this case). It must have traumatised a generation of kids about going to the dentist - I know we were all utterly petrified of it, and passed around horror stories in whispers: and Cat has similar memories (and even worse experiences than our stories!)

And that made me ponder and curse the name of Robert Hall, the dentist I was next sent to. I didn't realise it at the time, but his technique had an enormous flaw: after injecting anaesthetic, he never waited for it to take effect, so the pain was always intense. Of course, I didn't realise that he should have waited, having never had it before, so I went through school thinking that anaesthetic was pretty useless and hardly numbed the pain at all. Imagine my surprise when I first used another dentist and got properly anaesthetised!

I wonder, in retrospect, if Hall treated all his patients like this: I suspect not, I guess that he only did this to kids, that he was impatient and just wanted them out of the way & out of his surgery as fast as possible. Even so, what a f****** butcher.