The Murder House

Visiting the Butcher in Titirangi. No not the meat vendor, but the dentist.

I’ve just come from the dentist. When I arrived Loong, a very friendly Korean dentist, looked at me sympathetically, I think he must have looked up my record before I arrived and knew I didn’t want to be there. I told him on my first visit that I was phobic about dentists.

A few days ago, I had a few of these traditional Dutch biscuits. They were very hard, much harder than I remembered, and naturally I bit harder to get through the crust, but it was all crust. Then I tried a couple more to see if they were all hard like that. Biting through the third one my jaw felt an ache and I got the message that they were virtually inedible.

Back in my youth, when our family got Christmas parcels from Holland, we enjoyed these and other traditional treats, but they were softer, perhaps as a result at being at sea for a couple of months before they arrived on the other side of the world.

I tried to avoid going to the dentist, but I was worried I might have cracked a tooth. Loong thinks I have probably just bruised it. I hope he is right.

I have a phobia about dentists which started in my teens. When I was little, we had a school dental nurse. The staff were always very kind and friendly, mostly young, dressed in uniforms of white and red. They would clean your teeth a couple of times a year, and if you had been diligent and were looking after your teeth, they would give you a little snowman or something similar made out of cotton wool as a reward.

I always got one of those.

My mother used to tell me, “Girls won’t like you, if you don’t clean your teeth.” So I scrubbed them at least twice a day. Not that I cared much as to whether girls liked me at that age. We all played happily together, as did The Turtles on the AM radio.

When I was 11, I went to live with my grandparents in Holland. When I went to the dentist there, not at my school, which was very small, but at a larger school in the next village, they said I had the best tooth enamel they had ever seen. I guess it was because of the quality of the tap water they drank over there. Perhaps it was more harsh on tooth enamel than the water in New Zealand.

I remember my grandmother saying that they often had to boil their tap water before drinking or even using it for cooking. The majority of Dutch drinking water came from the Rhine, and several countries were dumping raw sewerage and other rubbish into it, which all found its way nicely into the Netherlands. In the 1960s and 70s, because the Rhine ended in the Netherlands, it became known as The Sewer of Europe. I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

On top of that, as a child at home in New Zealand, I wasn’t allowed sweets or sugary treats. In Holland, my grandparents on both sides gave me sweets, and I had a friend whose father owned a peppermint lolly factory, and he used to give me boxes full of retail dispensers of Dutch mints. I guess my breath was always fresh. Every time there was a birthday in our class at school, that person would be expected to buy sweets and licorice for everyone in the class, which was another fun change for me. Dutch people will remember it as “tracteren”, which is like having a ‘shout’ at the bar.

At the end of 1970, I came back to New Zealand and things changed. We had a local dentist, I think his name was Mr Plowman. He had a contract with the Education Department. They paid him to look after the teeth of school children, at schools that did not have a dental nurse of their own, which was most high schools. His nickname in the community was “The Butcher”.

I don’t know why, but it appeared he hated doing kids teeth. Everyone got treated pretty much the same, so it was nothing to do with me personally. I can only think that it was because he made more money from paying customers. He probably got a set rate per child per annum and the less he spent on them, the more profit he made. That’s just a guess, but it makes sense.

He never used any local anaesthetic. He said that if you wanted an injection, your parents would have to pay for it. Well my parents couldn’t afford that, so I didn’t get any anaesthetic. Of course with no anaesthetic and the type of drills they used back in the 70s, not only did they cause a lot of physical pain, but they set up a squeal that vibrated right through your head. It was a two-for-one deal. That was probably the beginning of my tinnitus, although loud music should take the real blame. I’ve had a lot of that over the years.

If the pain made the patient grimace or move in any way, The Butcher would get angry. He would say something like, “Keep still. If you move around, it will hurt more, but it won’t hurt me. So suit yourself.“

I was shocked, the first time I went to him. I had heard rumours, and people mentioned The Murder House, but I never gave it much thought. I figured it was just kids trying to make you scared.

I remember one day when I went to him, it would have been my first ever filling, I think I wasn’t keeping my mouth open wide enough for him. He stuck a couple of fingers in each side of my mouth, yanking it open, to show how wide it was, which was enough to make a corner of my mouth bleed.

In my late teens, being a cool guy who sometimes hung out with some fairly rough people, bikers and the like, I learned clever things like opening beer bottles with my teeth, which helped me fit in and was convenient. One day I learned a valuable lesson. The machines that capped our beer bottles in New Zealand had quite soft edges on the crimps, which were designed to make it easy for a bottle opener to pop the lid off.

I tried to open a glass bottle of Coca Cola, and instantly, ouch. It had sharp crimps, and I cracked a molar, using not much more pressure than I would with a beer bottle. Maybe I should have stuck to drinking beer :)

This resulted in a little poem I wrote around the age of 17.

Used to open bottles
With my teeth
And drink till sun
Gisunder.
But now my teeth
Are falling out
And I am left to wonder
At all the others who
Do the same 
As I did with due warning
But what the fuck
I'll crack another
And drink on till the morning

I had experiences with other dentists. I never had a regular one, because I avoided them. I don’t know why, call it coincidence, but often a problem would occur right before a trip.

For example, the night before going off for a ski trip, a few years later, I cracked another molar. I don’t remember how. I suspect it already had a hairline or internal crack from a previous misadventure. I went to an urgent dentist at around 8pm on a Friday night. A young Chinese man in Avondale, only recently graduated. He told me that the tooth needed to come out.

At least now I could have anaesthetic. I don’t think he had a lot of experience. He got himself a pair of dental forceps, gripped on tight, and almost pulled my head off. The tooth didn’t budge. He tried a few more times with no success. Then he asked if I minded if he would put his knee against my chest so he could get some leverage. I don’t know why he didn’t try to loosen it first, but I was no dentist and had no experience. I was trying to focus on the slopes the next day.

So he put his knee on my chest, gripped the hell out of the forceps, and CRACK!!! My tooth broke into little pieces, with half of them buried in my gum. Now he had to pull each piece out one by one with tweezers, like a doctor pulling shot from a boy who had snuck into the house for a naughty with the farmer’s daughter. I can tell you that as he got to the roots, no amount of anaesthetic was helping me. After close to two hours of agony, I had to pay dearly for the privilege from my wallet, adding insult to injury, but at least I got to go skiing.

Events like those probably scarred me for life when it comes to my phobia about dentists. There isn’t much I am afraid of, other than snakes and big spiders.

Anyway, my friend Loong was gentle and kind, and he thinks that the problem is simply bruising, under a crowned molar. He x-rayed below the molar and said it looked like a very healthy tooth, but couldn't see behind the crown itself. He covered it and surrounds with fluoride and said to wait a week or so and see if it improves. I payed only $67 which would be one of the cheapest dentist trips I’ve ever had, and am now eating and drinking very carefully, when the Paracetamol and Ibuprofen is at its peak.

Hopefully he is right, and in a week or two, it will just be another memory.

Do you have any phobias? Did you ever have a ‘butcher’?