Dental Practice

This week I went to the dentist’s for the first time in three years. Like supermarkets, it’s a different experience in a foreign country. Unlike supermarkets, it’s not one that I relish in any way.

My local dentist and his co-practitioner in Martel used to occupy the first floor premises above a hairdresser’s. Since my last visit, they’ve moved with another practitioner into a purpose-built building with air-conditioning, double-glazing, swing doors, the works. Most impressive. So how much more expensive would this visit be than the last?

The whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

‘In France, they kiss on Main Street,’ Joni Mitchell suggests. Well, I’m not sure if she’s quite au fait with the state of the national teeth. Visits to the dentist are not reimbursed at the same percentage rate as are visits to the doctor. This explains why the natives rush to the doctor at the slightest drip of a nose, but stay away from the dentist until the pain gets too much to bear. The consequence – allied to a rich diet – is often a distressing build-up of tartar. In France, they should be very circumspect before they kiss on Main Street.

Nevertheless, compared to Britain, now that there are virtually no dentists still operating under the NHS, you tend to get a pretty good deal in France. I’m not necessarily talking about orthodontists, who prey on parents’ insecurity and bleed them dry in the name of perfectly regular teeth. But dentists here, in my experience, have generally been highly competent and very reasonable. My poor wife did, however, encounter an old-fashioned sadist once, who didn’t offer anaesthetic and then virtually climbed into her mouth.

Still, posh new premises surely mean that someone’s got to pay for them. My immediate concern, though, was what to call the dentist. I’ve met him at a couple of social events, even hiked in snowshoes around the mountains of the Cantal with him. Should I therefore call him by his first name or say unto him ‘Docteur Garcia’? In the end, I took the coward’s way out by simply shaking his hand and saying ‘bonjour’.

I was particularly impressed by the fact that he remembered that I had a broken tooth at the back of my mouth. Lower left molar, or whatever it’s called in the profession. But as I settled back in the chair and was lowered effortlessly to extraction level, I realised that he must have checked my last X-Ray picture on his computer screen before I came in.

These days, everything is done in the name of sanitation and automation. A discreet jet of water turns on while you are rinsing your mouth, ready to wash away your spit. All the equipment seems to come in sealed paper sachets. Docteur Garcia donned a disposable mask, which rendered his dental mumbles quite unintelligible. I knew enough, though, to steel myself for an injection, an extraction and a repaired filling.

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but the suicide rate among dentists used to be abnormally high. So I try not to appear too terror-stricken. Even though I’ve seen Marathon Man twice, I try not to grip the arms of the chair. I try not to allow my morbid brain to dwell on the millions of animals and human beings that have suffered horribly so that today’s dentist causes us the minimum of hardship. Instead, I recite ‘I-will-relax’ and I conjure up a mental picture of the Pyrenees. Strange, but it seems to do the trick.

After the work, I felt so relieved that I gaily dropped Philippe’s name on several occasions. Not quite the breech of etiquette, perhaps, as the time my brother tipped his dentist, but I hoped that I wasn’t establishing a dangerous precedent. 

It was more expensive than last time, but 60-plus euros didn’t seem too outrageous given the state-of-the-art equipment on show. Moreover, roughly 70% of that will be reimbursed (unless they find some pretence for not reimbursing a foreigner). Docteur Garcia gave me a perfectly reasonable written estimate for a crown on another fissured tooth, which I signed and returned there and then. Struggling even more than usual with my pronunciation because of my anaesthetised mouth, I made three appointments for June, wrote my cheque and stepped out into the afternoon sunshine, feeling like a prisoner emerging from house arrest.

Now that I’m in my 50s, my teeth – like my sight and my hearing – are starting to fail me, but it’s a comfort to know that I’ll be in caring, competent hands.