Before this month began, I had not seen a dentist for years… certainly more than I admitted to the girl with the drill standing in front of me. I was embarrassed. I know, it’s terrible, and it’s one hundred percent my own fault. I just let the appointments slide and got on with my life.

Last year I decided I was going to get myself sorted with a dentist, and get any problems I had, fixed… and here we are in June, and I have now began my journey on the road to oral recovery.

I was extremely nervous for my initial rendezvous – a feeling which was to some degree, almost entirely unfounded. Except for Extraction ’06, I had never really had a bad experience in the dentist’s chair, and apart from that, my teeth had always been in pretty good shape.

But this time I knew I had problems, and the dentist didn’t disappoint me. She said I needed two teeth taken out, both of which were fractured. One was the upper left wisdom tooth and the second was an upper right, about midway round. I knew both of the teeth she was talking about, and I had mentally prepared myself for the extractions she was briefing me on.

She told me she could try to save the second one, but she wasn’t confident it would work… so I just asked her to use her best judgement and do what had to be done. She could tell that I was a little agitated, and asked if I wanted to be knocked out for it, a question which received a resounding “yes please” from me.

The good news – relatively speaking – was that apart from those two fractures, my teeth were in fairly good condition, and were just in need of a thorough clean.

So I booked an appointment for the following week, and the seven day countdown until I let that woman near me with a pair of pliers… was on.

… to be continued…