Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Toothache Medication to Deep State Meditation

Well, this is it. The day has arrived, and I must go. It's been a pleasure knowing you all, and i'm sure you all understand that once I return from these 10 days of soul searching i will most likely be on a different spiritual plane from the rest of you, and therefore unable to associate with you any longer. Well, maybe not. But hey, who knows? Will it change me? Will my blogs become all puritanical and preachy? Will I start behaving like a born again christian? Maybe an evil spirit will use use my spiritually vulnerable state during deep meditation to take control of my body and use it for unspeakable evil acts..... maybe I will have an epiphany and realise that I am in fact the son of god and you will all have to worship me and call me "my lord".... or maybe, just maybe, I'll spend the whole 10 days silently cursing the nazi hippies who have imprisoned me and dreaming of Mars Ice Creams and re-runs of "Black Books" on Channel 4. It's anybody's guess. All I know is that it's too late to back out now. For better or for worse I am going to sit in silence for 10 days and see what happens. Hopefully it'll make for some good writing material!

By the way, I now have a car!!! My first ever car! And I've bought insurance as well! Now all I need is for the car to work and I'm away!!! Don't worry, it will, I'm going to meditate on it.

I went to the dentist yesterday. Fucking bastard. If you weren't aware, the situation with NHS Dentists in england is a complete nightmare. Basically there aren't any. So the only option for people who can't afford to go private like myself is to wait until they are in sever pain, and then go down to the emergency drop-in centre for some emergency treatment. So, yesterday, having put up with my toothache for long enough for it to reach an acceptable level of pain, I set of for the clinic. As luck would have it they had an appointment only an hour after I arrived, so i sat down to wait. Just over an hour later, a little rat-like man in a white overcoat came and poked his head around the door. "Bily Salisbury", he announced. I got up and folowed him into the surgery and sat myself down. Now I had been practising my explanation of my problems all morning, so it was pretty damn clear, but as I tried to give it, he kept interrupting me, not really listening at all. When I had finished, he had a look in my mouth and exclaimed,

"Well, I don't know what your talking about, you've got a perfect set of teeth!!".

I tried once again to explain to him that I believed there was decay under one of my fillings, as it was a very deep filling and had had decay deep in the tooth when it was put in. He ignored me completely and started talking about the other side of my jaw as I had mentioned that it also hurt me occasionally. He pointed to it and said

"How much and how often and what kind of pain?" in a brisk irritable manner.

I pointed to the right side of my jaw and began to say, "well on this side..." planning to explain that the left side was basically just a lesser version of what I felt on the right.

"That's not what i asked you is it?!!!", he interrupted aggressively.

"Yeah, but I need to...",

"JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!" he barked at me like a psychotic school master from hell.

I was stunned. Medical proffesionals don't talk to there patients do they??? I suddenly had a strong urge to say something offensive and caught myself back just in time, after all, this man was in a position to inflict a lot of pain with little or no consequences to himself... best to play it safe.

"If you'll just let me finish I think you'll understand what I'm trying to say...", I managed, and finally got him to listen to my explanation.

But still he wasn't really listening. Each time i described the part that was hurting, he simply heard what he wanted to hear, and kept attributing it to a wisdom tooth. In the end he got irritable again.

"Well what do you want me to do?! Do you want me to drill out that perfectly good filling just to look underneath?? Is that what you want me to do??".

"Well I don't know, you're the dentist!! I'm just telling you what i think the problem is!"

"Well you have to tell me, what do you want me to do!"

Surely this wasn't normal? Usually the dentist suggests the best course of action and asks you if you want to go along with it, doesn't he?

I was starting to get the impression that this dentist had actually realised I was probably right but just didn't wan't admit that maybe he was wrong, so instead of suggesting the action, was trying to bully me into requesting it. What a cocksucker!

"Ok, please take that filling out and look underneath"...

As soon as i had taken resposibility for the procedure, his mood changed completely!! He started using phrases like "Oookayy, well done, that's the worst of it over.." and even smiling occasionally! Then, after drilling for about 5 minutes, he stoped smiling and his face went blank. Rather than the usual running commentary that dentists give, he was completely silent. Eventually, after scraping around inside my tooth, he finally came clean.

"Ahem. Ahhh, right. Now, there was some decay in there, and I've done my best to get it out. I think I've got it all out. Now it's a much more complicated filling than I thought, so I'm just gonna put a sedative dressing in there and a temporary filling, and then you'll have to make an appointment with a entist as soon as possible to have the filling done."

Whaaaaaat!!!!!!! Why do you think I'm here you fucking A-Hole?? because I don't HAVE a dentist!!!! There ARE no dentists!! And now I have only a month (10 days of which are going to be spent meditating and trying to purge you from my brain) in which to get it sorted before this poxy mix of tipp-ex and cotton wool falls out and leaves me in agony!!

Back at home later that day I tried to call around the NHS Dental Surgerys to see if I could get an appointment to have the filling done.

"Ok sir, I can put you on the witing list if you like?".

"Umm, how long is the waiting list roughly?"

"Roughly? Ohhh, about err 12 months".

"12 months??!!! You're kidding me right??"

"No sir, that's the waiting list I'm afraid".

"But your emergency dentist has just put in a temporary filling that only lasts a month!! So what do I do when it falls out?!"

"Well, if you're in pain you can always make an appointment at our emergency drop-in centre for some emergency treatment..........

I give up.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed that tale from the darkside... see you all in 10 days!

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