Alexander Lambton

Age 13
S2, Peebles High School, Scottish Borders

Dentist’s Surgery

It started out as a normal dental check-up. I sank into the special motorised chair and leant back as the chair tilted into a horizontal position.

I ‘opened wide’ on the dentist’s instruction and squinted as the light was pulled over my face. Then he dug in with his mirrors and his special probing instrument. With which he poked every single one of my teeth whilst spurting out that stream of incomprehensible numbers and letters to the lady bent over a form.

He took a particular interest in one of my molars.

He muttered to himself for a moment, and then he said, ‘We are going to have to take that one out, I’m afraid. A second tooth has missed your baby tooth and only hit half of it, so it is now half out and half rooted so we are going to have to take it out.’

Suddenly I felt a little afraid. This was a first time experience and I based my assumptions as to what would happen on my mum’s experience a few years earlier. And that was not encouraging to say the least.

He rummaged around in a drawer and brought out a huge, crooked rod of stainless steel: a needle that seemed vastly out of proportion to the area that needed to be injected.

He said, ‘Open wide,’ again, and again I opened my mouth. However the instruments looked considerably more threatening this time.

The needle jabbed down twice and a foul taste entered my mouth. I got a rinse and by the time I had finished my mouth felt like it had swelled beyond any recognition. Also, I had lost all feeling in that part of my mouth.

Then he took out a tiny, two-pronged fork with which he repeatedly jabbed the area of my gum around my tooth.

‘To loosen the flesh,’ he pointed out amiably. A tone that seemed a bit out of place considering he had stabbed me half a dozen times in the mouth.

Then he took out what looked like a blunt-nosed adjustable spanner. He set it tightly around my tooth and levered downwards.

A horrific creaking, crunching, grinding, wrenching noise accompanied the movement. Deep in my gum, I felt thousands of little levers lifting my tooth out of its place in my gum. My tooth was being shoved, pulled, twisted, and generally abused by this blunt instrument. He pulled down hard for the final time. The noise and the feeling made me feel slightly ill.

With a shuddering jar the tooth resisted for a final split second then it snapped out.

He gave me another rinse and blood tinged water spewed out of my seemingly misshapen mouth.

He let me go with a cheery, ‘Off you pop now son.’

I staggered shakily out of the chair, feeling bemused. It was not at all as bad as I had expected it to be. All the same, my gum felt swollen as a baboon’s behind, and the spot where my tooth had been ached considerably and I hadn’t even been offered a sticker.