I harbour a silly & secret fear of losing my teeth.  Advanced technologies and preventative dentistry make it nonsense; I didn’t say it was logical.  The origin is unclear as I’ve not experienced anything more traumatic than the filling of the usual childhood cavities.  My first dentist was a kindly grey-haired gent who reminded me of Herman Munster’s dad.  A mumbling, humming fellow in a priestlike white high-collared costume whose instructions I could never understand much less follow.  I liked his receptionist/assistant who called me Princess.

This silly dental fear reared it’s ugly CROWN (sorry – couldn’t resist) while I lived in the Virgin Islands.  As I worked in the local Emergency Room, I was intimately aware of how filthy the poorly-equipped hospital was, and how undertrained the staff were.  One of the EMT’s (not quite a paramedic yet) who I will call George was the scariest of them all.  He was a nice enough guy who tried to be helpful, but failed epically due to his inappropriate enthusiasm for inflicting the most painful, oversized IV’s possible with no regard as to patient suffering.  His rationale for inserting a missile-sized angiocath was simply the presence of a juicy large vein.  Did I mention he wasn’t particularly accurate?  I still get shivers of fear when I think of him turned loose on society, or the possibility of spending any time sequestered in that hospital.

I suffered a recurring nightmare wherein I was involved in a late night head-on collision on a blind curve/hill on a main road, the source of many of our accident victims.  I felt the shocking impact after being blinded by bright headlights.  After certain unconsciousness, I woke in a pool of warm, sticky blood that smelled of gasoline, every inch of my body stinging from ground-in shattered glass. Moans of agony could be heard from the dark long before the moans of the emergency sirens.  I was disoriented, aware there’d been an accident, but unable to actually move or act.  I fumbled my way back to consciousness in time to see George excitedly lumbering my way toting his tools of torture.

I tried to escape only to realize my left femur poked out from my thigh skin at a disgustingly obscene angle making normal ambulation impossible.  Frantic, I attempted to claw my way across the pavement, leg screaming, fingers burning.  George closed in.  When I opened my mouth to beg for mercy, only teeth came out along with some unintelligible sounds.  My tongue explored the tender holes in my palate and I screamed!

OK, so it never happened, but I’m still uber vigilant of good mouth care to prevent toothlessness in real life.   I can’t say that I enjoy tooth cleaning, but know I dislike it less than a sagging empty mouth, pureed food or mumbly speech.  My kind hygienist, Viv, has great focus and attention to detail.  Lucky me to have someone so…. well, delightfully picky in my dental corner.

I’ll bet you can guess what the only problem is:  I CAN’T TALK WHILE SHE WORKS!