OK, I have to
own up here. Previous ‘shouldn’t happen’
postings have been about other people. This one is about me.
About twenty
years ago, I bought a little 19ft Seawytch sailing cruiser to keep and sail at
Kielder Water a huge lake in Northumberland UK. Kielder is the largest man-made
lake in Europe set among pine forests close to the Scottish border. It was a
high altitude windy location and the lake was large enough to allow serious
waves to develop, so sailing there was not dissimilar to sailing a Scottish sea
loch.
I’d bought the
boat from a military guy who did everything by the book. The boat was crammed
with gear and equipment, carefully maintained, all shipshape and Bristol fashion.
If I had one minor criticism it would be that the previous owner had
‘over-stocked’ the inventory. There was enough anchor cable to secure the boat
to the bottom of the deepest Atlantic trench, and the anchor and kedge were
large enough to hold a small battleship.
The range of flares stowed aboard exceeded the ‘off-shore’ requirement
and the fenders, when not in use, filled the entire forward cabin.
The fact that
the boat was equipped more for an ocean voyage than an afternoon sail around
the lake was particularly evident when the first aid medical pack was opened,
the quantity and range of equipment in there would have put a military
field-hospital to shame. It even
contained a DIY dentistry kit, complete with instructions on how to extract or
fill your own tooth.
What's in your kit? |
My problem began
at the start of the long Easter weekend break, four days of public holiday, a
period when most dentists and pharmacies were closed. The start of the break
coincided with a dull ache in an upper right molar, a tooth which had shed part
of its filling a few weeks before.
Yes, I should
have gone to my dentist immediately, but I don’t like pain and dentists scare
me. Anyway loosing the filling hadn’t resulted in immediate pain so I presumed
it didn’t matter. Well it did matter,
because while friends were away launching their boats for the coming season and
enjoying an unusually mild and sunny Easter Saturday, I was sitting at home, morose, nursing an
ever worsening pain in the jaw.Then I had an
idea, I could fix the problem myself using the DIY dentistry kit on the boat.
To fill your own
tooth, the instructions said I had to wash my mouth with a pink solution from
the kit. Then I had to take the cotton wool (supplied) to pack between my tooth
and cheek, thus drying the area and protecting the rest of my mouth. I then had
to heat up a small piece of metal (looking suspiciously like cold solder). I
managed this by putting it in a spoon and holding it over the gas cooker. The
next bit was more tricky. Somehow I had to get the hot amalgam from the spoon
to my tooth. In the end I achieved this by taking a fork from the kitchen
drawer, bending all the tines back, except one, dipping the remaining tine into
the metal and then rushing the fork into my mouth to smear the metal over the
hole in my tooth. It was a long operation and I managed to miss the tooth on
several occasions, the result was that I had several pieces of metal attached
to innocent teeth which had required no treatment. Worse was to come however.
When I attempted to remove the cotton wool, I discovered that it was stuck
fast. The metal had effectively glued it to my tooth. My DIY efforts had given me a furry tooth and
the pain hadn’t diminished, if anything it was worse. To add to my woes, sharp
bits of metal were cutting into my tongue and all the prodding and poking had made
my jaw more painful than ever.
After a stiff
slug of Whiskey, I managed to file away the bits of rogue metal, but the only
way to dislodge the cotton wool, was to take the fork and dig out the metal
filling the hole. Painful slow work which was not 100% successful. Significant
tufts of cotton wool remained firmly attached.
There was
nothing for it but to make an appointment with a dentist. He looked at my mouth
and listened to my explanation for the wool and bits of shrapnel he found in
there. He then left the room and returned with a colleague a few minutes later,
wiping his eyes for some reason. The colleague took a look made a choking kind
of noise and left the room.
It took about an
hour for the dentist to clear the cotton wool and iron from my mouth and then
he dropped the real bombshell.
‘Well
that’s tidied up the mess. Nothing wrong with the tooth by the way, never
was. It’s a gum infection. It can easily
happen, take these tablets that’ll sort it.’
Seaward
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