I gave my tooth a fond farewell this week. A backwards glance at it’s disgusting self was all that it received. It certainly deserved nothing more after having tormenting me for 17 years. Who would have thought that a hockey stick to the face could be so serious?
I had thought that any dentist could pull a tooth out of your mouth. I still have a picture in my head of how I could do it at home, by tying a string to my tooth and the other end to a door handle; and then slamming the door. Instead of a dentist, though, I was referred to a maxillae facial surgeon. I suspected that a dentist with a name like that, would have a whole different level of skill. No doubt he would charge for it too!
My fancy pants dentist picked up a pair of pliers, grabbed my tooth, stopped short of resting his foot on my shoulder, and yanked the thing out. For that amount of skill I knew that the bill would be astronomical and I was not wrong! Looking at the tooth though, I had to give it the man; it really had outlived its time in my mouth. It was not pretty!
The whole tooth thing got me thinking about them times long ago. What on earth did a cowboy in leather pants and spurs, crossing the great western plains on horseback, do when tooth pain struck? Or one of King Shaka’s warriors happily stomping on thorns in his loin cloth but brought to the ground by a throbbing ache in his skull? Did you bribe your best mate to knock it out with a big rock? Or did you just take the pain and hope that this too would pass.
And for some unlucky ones, the bad tooth would become an abscess which would then infect the brain, causing an agonising death. Yes, death from a tooth ache!
Seems so silly yet I would imagine that it still happens today. Not to us privileged few, not in our world of advanced health care and maxillae facial surgeons.
The last couple of weeks have clearly pointed at the incredible importance of one’s health. Without it we may get an understanding of the meaning of life a lot sooner than we wanted!
