Terminal tartar
When I was about five years old, growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, a first visit to the dentist yielded the most perplexing diagnosis: I was afflicted with terminal tartar.
Now in our home, in honour of my mom’s vestigial Catholicism, combined with her ardent desire to be a contemporary 1950s housewife, we always ate fish sticks on Fridays, accompanied by frozen French fries … and tartar sauce.
I was convinced that my teeth issues, which so perplexed our local dentist – from whose orifices, except for the buccal, sprouted a luxuriant proliferation of the most disconcerting hair – were linked to the delectable sauce that enhanced our oceanic end-of-the-week treats.
Of course I soon learned that this dental tartar was altogether less fishy, being of a much more mineral nature.
And thus began an ongoing process of relentless hectoring and Herculean excavation that has lasted nearly 70 years. To no avail.
Each time I visit a new dental centre, I get the flossing lecture, accompanied by all manner of suggested Medieval prods, tools, and devices, along with sample flosses, lessons on how to insert, scrape, and tug these rope-like accoutrements, and reprimands for my deficient dental hygiene.
Innovative mouth washes and stupendous state-of-the art toothpastes are also thrust upon me, all of them to be diligently stored in the dental hygiene nook set aside in our home.
My accumulated tartar requires the strenuous efforts of the most muscular hygienists, who supplement their ferocious hacking and wrenching with the use of equipment resembling forklifts, mini bulldozers, and front end loaders, along with a vast array of weapons of mass destruction.
During my checkered existence, there have been three special exceptions to these repeated onslaughts of excavating and cajoling, all of which have occurred in recent years when I’ve definitely become long in the tooth.
The first took place during that bizarre period beginning in March 2020. By spring 2021, my teeth were encumbered with such a thick layer of jagged tartar that my mouth felt like it had encapsulated a buzz saw. And I had a crown fall out, a near-choking experience that was anything but regal. So I was accepted as an emergency patient at our Montreal clinic, which had been transformed into an armed camp. The receptionist, clad in the most arcane personal protective equipment (dubbed PPE), had to shoot me with some sort of fever gun before beetling back behind her plexiglass barrier. After producing the requisite proof of inoculation, I was ushered into the inner sanctum of the facility, where I had to remove practically all of my clothes, including footwear. (No striptease music was provided.) Said garments were stored in a huge plastic bag by the highly camouflaged hygienist, who doubled as trash collector. She was a novice from a faraway land, all the previous workers having long since fled the scene of the crime. This hapless young woman spoke little English or French and was in no mood for levity; she performed only a perfunctory cleaning before pointing to my potentially lethal garments and showing me the door. After this excruciating ordeal, I needed to pee with an urgency born of stress. However the dental personnel forbade such bladder evacuation, having barred the erstwhile bathroom with those yellow and black strips of tape previously used to cordon off crime scenes.
The second radical departure from the prod and lecture procedures occurred when my wife and I moved to France late in 2021.
The Gallic approach to dental hygiene is basically benign or hostile neglect. In fact, dental hygienists, clad in PPE armor or otherwise, do not exist in the birthplace of Moliere. Harried and underpaid dentists are instead lumbered with the teeth cleaning and scaling duties that they despise more than an inferior slab of Brie cheese. Our first dentist, a rude and vicious harridan, basically told me not to come back for a cleaning for three to five years, but not before she assembled a group of her clinic colleagues around my prostrate body, laid out like a slab of boeuf tartare on the reclining dental chair, curtly ordered me to open my mouth wide, and announced in a stentorian rasp, “ Look here. A Canadian mouth. Compare that to a rotting French orifice.” Obviously the massive tartar and plaque accretions that had caused such consternation in our home and native land were a mere bagatelle in a nation where dental hygiene was frozen in the era of Asterix.
The latest iteration of tartar excavation has been by far the funniest. I have had the great good fortune of discovering a dental clinic here in Ottawa, Wellington Dental Care, which is infused with an atmosphere of tolerance, respect, and good humour. The banter begins with the kindly receptionist, who threatens truant patients with fines by text message but who enjoys being teased for her zeal. From the gentle, thorough, and nimble hygienists to our chipper dentist Dr. K, I’ve at last been treated by professionals who respect the vagaries of my ancient mouth and my futile efforts to dredge its fossilized tartar deposits.
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
