Doctors and Dentists

I remember, the teacher who marched the school choir, as we were called, was suffering from very bad toothache on one occasion, and she tried to speak as little as possible because the cold air would hurt her tooth even more.
I could sympathise with that sad state of affairs extremely well, as I had suffered from a similar affliction on several occasions. Eclampsia during my mother's pregnancy and Delrose Syrup had a lot to answer for. I had lost both my front teeth before I was four, and my back ones were not much better.
As a small child, I got to know Great Ormand Street Hospital extremely well, where my dental treatment was always carried out by a very nice dentist who didn't hurt much. And afterwards they usually gave me a small children's book, so early visits to the dentist were definitely not a negative experience. On the contrary, on leaving the great hospital I would always look up where I could see the children who were actually staying there, and wished that I could stay too. I loved the bright red blankets on their beds, and I wanted one as well.
The negative experiences with dentists came later, when my second teeth startedto come through. On at least two occasionsI was taken to the emergency department of University College Hospital to have a painful molar removed.
I think injections were around then, but I always had gas, which was a horrible experience, that I feared with all my heart. First, a huge black rubber object with a shiny metal chain on it, was wedged between my teeth, then they would put a black rubber mask over my face and I was told to breath deeply. SuddenlyI was transported into a terrifying, spooky world, where the dentist and the nurses in their white coats, and me in the dentist's chair, were all caught up somehow in a horrible grey spider's web and we were all spinning round in it accompanied by unearthly whistlings and hummings. Only then, would I finally become completely insensible. It seemed hours later, although in reality, probably only a few minutes, that I started groggily to come round. I remember being glad that it was over, but feeling so ill and so sick that I couldn't really enjoy it. The yellow stuff that they gave me to drink was meant to make me sick, and it did. Then after half an hour or so I was pronounced well enough to go home.
I remember three things about the ENT waiting room at that big London Hospital, The walls were glazed bricks, I used to give myself headaches trying to count them; the people sat and waited on long wooden benches; and there was a huge, realistic rocking horse at the front. When I was younger, and obviously not feeling so ill, it would be a wonderful treat to ride on this wonderful rocking horse, although of course, by the time I was having my back molars out I considered myself far too old for such unsophisticated pleasures.
Almost as bad an experience as the gas at the hospital, were visits to a certain dentist, when I was about ten or so, who lived on one of the streets just outside Regent's Park. It was a tall, imposing house, and I entered it with dread. The only reading matter he had on his highly-polished waiting-room table were copies of Punch magazine for adults, of which I quite liked the picture of Punch on the cover, and a German book of Salutary Tales for Children, featuring such horrors as thumbs being cut off by a huge pair of scissors and a boy expiring from hunger after not eating his soup. Neither the poems themselves nor the graphic illustrations which accompanied them did much to enhance my mood as I waited to be summoned into hell.
This particular dentist did not believe in injections, so I had to suffer the full gamut of pain which he could inflict on me with his cumbersome, noisy drill. He would select the bits for it with care and I had learned which ones hurt the most.
In his defence, the actual fillings he gave me lasted many years, and were well done, but there should have been a law about subjecting a child to so much pain, fear and suffering. But times were different then. You just put up with things as stoically as possible.
I always remember the beautiful walks home through Regent's Park. It always seemed to be Autumn with red and golden leaves swept up in huge piles. I used to love walking through these crisp rustling leaves and searching for shiny conkers. Even now, I associate conkers with happiness and I find them beautiful.
It is strange, that in spite of such unpromising beginnings, I still have my own teeth, over fifty years on, and people still sometimes compliment me on how neat and even thay are.