Here we are again, slowly and inexorably moving towards Xmas in the same way as being strapped to a conveyor belt at the end of which is a Wallace and Gromit-esque machine filled with slashing knives, circular saws and meat grinders. Having to brave the city centre to do shopping for presents and tussle with the aggressive old women who appear from out of nowhere wanting the exact thing that you just picked up to look at. Being begged by your children to buy the biggest and most expensive Lego sets known to man and beast. Putting up the tree and decorations and ending up in a tangled mess of tinsel and glitter when it all goes horribly wrong.
These are all things you might expect me to think about Xmas, but you would be wrong, wrong-wrong-wrongety-wrong, I tells thee. I love it. To me it evokes memories of childhood; getting awesome presents that, because we weren't awfully well off when I was wee, seemed so much bigger; going to my Grandma and Grandad's house for dinner, which would be a huge turkey roast with Yorkshire puddings and mash; singing carols at school, and the nativity; and the only opportunity to ever see Digby, The Biggest Dog In The World. I love Xmas. I actually get a little bit excited as it gets closer to the day, and that only gets better when you get to engage your kids in that excitement too; my son is 6 and still believes in Father Christmas, whereas my daughter, at 10, is somewhat more cynical, but they are both still getting all wound up tightly over that very special day. It's not about religion to me - to be honest, as a complete and utter atheist that represents the very worst part of Xmas in my eyes. It's all about the childlike glee, the magic of old memories stirred into life by the sight of tinsel and the sound of carol singers. It's about not wanting to go to bed because you're so excited about what Father Christmas will bring you and remembering that feeling.
I know it's not very misanthropic of me, but meh, fuck you all.
In other news, I have been suffering lately with an abscess that made my face swell up on one side and made me look like half of Marlon Brando in the Godfather. The accompanying pain was quite intense, a deep and pervasive treacle of doom that sat in the bones of my face and pissed all over my nerves until they really didn't like it. Eating hurt. Talking hurt. Moving hurt. Not moving hurt. Laying down hurt. For a couple of days there, pretty much everything hurt and I had about six hours sleep. I had to do the thing I've been putting off for some time now - about 16 years, to be precise - I had to make an appointment with the dentist.
I know my mouth is shit. I have always had crappy soft teeth that, despite being brushed twice a day, still managed to just randomly collapse on themselves. When I was 19 I had a whole slew of extractions done of all of the bad teeth, and have a palate of false teeth at the top. The ones that were left are mostly still intact, but there are a couple that have gone horribly wrong. Having worked in retail for most of the intervening time, however, there was little to no chance of me ever being able to afford to get them fixed - when you take home £600 a month, and £250 of that goes on your rent, finding £200 for even cheap NHS root canal work is just not gonna happen. So they've stayed that way, until finally one of them has done this to my face.
Now that I am a dole, it seems like the ideal time to a) get the necessary work sorted, and b) finally try to confront my own ball-tingling terror of dentists and the pain of dental treatment. I am one of those people dentists hate. I am hypersensitive to pain, and local anaesthetics don't seem to do a lot to me other than make my cheek go numb. However, most of my fear of dentists comes from the way they talk to patients. Yes, I know my mouth is shit. Stop telling me. No, really. Shut up. OK, I get the message now, you're really not happy with the way I've not been to a dentist - yes, SHUT THE FUCK UP. It's all well and good when you earn over £100,000 a year and can afford to piss away £500 on a good night out to condescend and moralise about poor bastards who don't visit the dentist regularly, but when it all comes down to either paying for dental treatment or eating for two months, I'm going to take the eating every single time and flip the twatty dentists the finger. They never seem to be able to get this simple inequality between our incomes. Before this, my last experience of a dentist was going for a checkup after my extractions (and to pick up my newer and better fitting dentures which, thankfully, had already been done before I got my job and were therefore still free)and the dentist seeing a tooth that needed filling. I asked him what the price would be. On the NHS, it would be over £100. I was working in a certain wargames emporium at that point and was taking home about £600 a month. Needless to say, I couldn't afford the filling. The conversation went thusly;
"But it's your dental health, this work has to be done."
"I understand that, but I don't have £100."
"Well, it's you that will suffer."
"I know this, but I still don't have £100."
"I know this, but I still don't have £100."
"You'd rather save money than have good, healthy teeth?"
"No, I don't have £100 to save, either. I don't have £100."
"You'd rather let them rot?"
"Unless you're willing to do the work for free, because as of yet, £100 has not magically appeared in my bank account to pay for it."
That was the last time I actually went to a dentist, and is fairly typical of the way they seem to treat people. None of them ever believed how often I brushed my teeth and those conversations usually went the same way as the one just detailed, with them basically accusing me of leaving them to rot when in fact I was desperately trying to keep them fine twice a day. At one point I was brushing them after every meal when I was about 14 because pieces were starting to fall off them. But no, no, according to the omniscient dentist, I'd not brushed them at all. Do they have classes in pig-headedness in dentist school?
It also makes me think that there should be absolutely no reason why dental health should not all be free on the NHS. That abscess could have made me seriously ill, yet my GP wouldn't touch it, nor prescribe medication for it. Had I not been able to afford dental treatment, my only alternative would be to wait until it got unbearable and go to A & E - who might well have said that they couldn't deal with it anyway as it was a dental issue. Almost feels like being in America. What, you could die from something but nobody will treat you for free? Too bad, you freeloading pinko, get a fucking job like a proper American and pay for it.
Anyway, all this aside, I had an appointment with the emergency dentist on Wednesday, who had to be the usual dentist (I apologised for the state of my teeth but explained my financial past - he just shook his head and said "Don't apologise to me, apologise to your mouth.") and prescribed me some antibiotics. The proper dentist saw me on Friday and, after I explained myself and my worries, actually surprised me by just getting down to work very professionally, with no sarcasm. This helped enormously, and I thanked her for her approach and sensitivity. I need to go back on Wednesday for my first filling, so now I just have to deal with the pain issue...
