By the time you read this I will be recovering from the latest trauma to my teeth. This happens from time to time when you get older and as I've said before, teeth are quite hard to ignore, what with being bang in the middle of your face and fairly essential for eating, speaking and smiling prettily.
Over the past month I have lost yet another old amalgam filling. This is both good and bad news – on the one hand (hurrah) I can get rid of the ugly black splodge and have a lovely new white filling, but on the other hand (gulp) a crown costs the equivalent of a four-star holiday somewhere exotic. That's a whole lot of money now I'm a self-employed freelance writer instead of a comfortably insured wage slave. I have a feeling that I have seen the future and I can't say I'm that thrilled. With a heavy heart I called my dentist – this is the private London dentist I signed up with because, having had the same family dentist for 40 years I was nervous about finding a new one. My new dentist is lovely and he sorted me out with a temporary filling straight away, which took care of the immediate crisis and meant I could at least eat.
Next, faced with an eye-watering bill and in mortal terror of my first tooth gap, I got down to a bit of research before I took the plunge and tore up my domestic budget for the next three months. Twitter is good on these things but the view was pretty polarised, with half saying I should save my money and have the damn thing taken out while the other half said that to do so was a false economy and I should hang on to it. My dad was in favour of having the tooth pulled, while my oldest friend had done exactly that and ended up with a troublesome gap. The Audit Commission's Report on Dentists and Dental Health (2002) offered up the following dazzling insights for the 55–64 age group:
• There is overwhelming evidence that keeping your own teeth makes eating easier.
• Over 90% of us have had our teeth scaled and polished.
• People with less [gum] disease receive more treatment because they are generally better off.
Fascinating – and also "no shit, Sherlock". Given that the cost of a crown (depending on type, complexity and your dentist) comes in at between £350 and £1,200 and having the tooth pulled at about a quarter of that, it won't surprise you to learn that the reason most 55-64 year olds are already missing at least one molar is simply because they can't afford to repair it. You might also think that a gap somewhere discreet is no big deal but it can be the start of future problems because the teeth around it start to move, altering your "bite" and if it's a lower tooth the corresponding upper tooth will likely over-erupt and grow longer now there's nothing for it to work against and keep it in check.
So now I find myself making a calculation I make quite a lot lately – if I have this done will it see me out? In other words, will this expensive new bit of tooth last me for the rest of my natural life? If this sounds morbid it's not really, just practical. I do it with other investment purchases such as new saucepans and the super-swish winter coat I fell in love with so why not apply the same logic to something like this. You'd be surprised how many people my age will also admit to doing something similar if pressed.
The upshot is that at this moment in time I have decided, for reasons of both vanity and a love of real chewy food to have the tooth crowned. After all, what is life if I can't crunch an apple and occasionally (and privately) chomp on a chunk of toffee big enough to make me dribble. But most of all, and despite all my justifying, I suppose it's vanity – I want to be able to throw back my head and roar with laughter without worrying whether there's a peanut stuck in my gap.
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