FREE DENTISTRY

My sister-in-law, after training as a kindergarten teacher and working in social affairs for the local council, has changed course at the age of 40 and decided to train as a dental technician. As part of her training, she needed a few guinea pigs on whom she could practice her teeth-cleaning skills. Since it was free and I am family, I volunteered.

I have very crooked teeth, a legacy of my youth, when braces were painful, injections were virtually unknown and gas was common. So cleaning my teeth to get rid of the build-up of gunk is not easy. My regular dentist obviously finds this sort of thing desperately tedious, so he does it in 10 minutes flat; which in turn means I tend to sweat a lot while he does it and end up with sore gums. My sister-in-law, being a beginner and wanting to do it properly, took a leisurely two hours, which was fine by me.

After the cleaning there was further practice with x-rays, including a panoramic view of my head. That was worth doing, since she found a tooth, which looked as if it had become infected. It was only after she pointed this out that I (and she) noticed that the tooth in question was in fact a bit loose. So that's going to have to come out next Thursday, unless of course it comes out of its own accord before then.

Unfortunately, because my sister-in-law isn't yet in the tooth-extracting business, that won't be free. I suppose you can't have everything.

Walter Blotscher