Back to teeth: many years ago my SO had an abcess in the root of one of his front teeth, which were crowns anyway. The dentist decided that the root was no good and the other wouldn't last much longer, and duly got him booked into the dental hospital in Nottingham. Having been shot full of local anaesthetic, the procedure began with the age-old instruction "raise you hand if you feel pain". As they began the 12 front-to-back stitches required to anchor the gum back down, you can all guess that the hand went up. Then the semaphore started. I think he was well into some pretty exotic continental hand-gestures, while lying in a pool of sweat, by the time they'd finished.

I went to the same place to have my bottom wisdom teeth out. They decided to do them on 2 separate occasions and under local (I was breast-feeding a 3 month old baby, but not in the chair, I might add!). The first one required 2 stitches and levering out from the side with a rod, like an old tree stump. I have memories of the pressure on my jaw, the sounds, the vacuum tube in my mouth and what went up it, and all through the procedure the sound of my baby crying in the waiting room. I came out looking like I'd been in a fight, and it was a beggar to heal. The following day we went to a wedding and one of the guests said he had been nervous about asking me what had happened in case I had been beaten up. A month later I went for the second one, and here's where I can say that it was (relatively) fun: having had the required 10 minutes for the shot to work, I sat down in the chair with, unlike the previous occasion, just an old consultant and a dental nurse in attendance. In went the pliers, out came the tooth, followed by very quick and easy healing and hardly any swelling.

Andrea