Not lucky with dentists

Four months in Paris and my teeth are fine. A month in Saudi and already a dental problem. A part of my molar cracked while eating pistachios.  Which is a damn huge cause for alarm, because I cannot, of course, take a taxi or anything to see a dentist by myself; I have to wait for Julien to come home from work to drive me to see a dentist.

So we find a dentist, make an appointment and head on over on a hot humid evening. The dentist is a kindly woman in her early 40s. I settle on the seat and open my mouth as she pokes around at my molar.

Then she says, “Yes, your tooth it cracked because your tooth it loose. See? Tooth moves. Let me take xray.”

Yeah, I’m feeling scared now…

*after the xray*

“Like I said, tooth loose. Do you want to keep the tooth?”

Errr. “You mean, as opposed to you pulling it out?”

She smiled. “Yes, anyway, it fall off soon.”

What the —

“What do you MEAN it will fall off? Could you please just fix it up?”

“Yes, because your tooth is loose. See?” She points to the xray. “Gums loose. It is because your tooth is sad.”

Pause.

“My tooth is sad,” I repeated.

“Yes. You know? Sad?” She pulls the corners of her mouth down in a perfect emoticon of a sad face.

Jesus Christ. This is her professional opinion. I keep on waiting for her to laugh and say it was a joke, but she doesn’t. My tooth is sad. “Please… could you just fix the part that cracked? Put in a filling or something?”

“So you want to keep it?”

“Yes please. Don’t remove my tooth. Even if it’s moving a bit or anything. Please.”

“Ok,” she says cheerfully. She does the work, I pay the secretary with trembling hands and get the hell outta there.

It’s been a week and I still have nightmares of someone pulling out my sad molar.

Currently listening to:
Mum
Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know