Trauma

We have had a most traumatic day.

It has been looming over us for a while now, because Mark had a dentist’s appointment to have his tooth taken out.

The day started off well enough, contentedly in our warm little house despite torrential rain and sleet outside. Mark pottered about doing things to his car headlights, and I made a tray of shortbread, ready for the children coming home, and we had a pot of tea and enjoyed being together.

The dentist is in Barrow. It would not be the lovely fairy-princess dentist who we saw last time, because she has buzzed off backpacking around the world for six months. This is the reason Mark has had to wait so long since then to get his tooth pulled out: it was because they couldn’t find a locum to take her place.

They have found one now, and we drove over through the sheets of rain and put our big hats on to dash across from the car park to the dentist.

Of course I went into the dentist with him, because we do things together. The locum dentist was a slender young Indian gentleman, and we liked him as well, he was softly spoken and courteous. He explained to Mark that he needed two back teeth taken out, one at the top and one at the bottom, and asked which one Mark would prefer that he did today.

Mark said that he would very much like him to do both. The dentist said that this was not a nice thing to do, because of all the very unpleasant discomfort, and that he would not recommend, sir.

Mark said that he would like to get all of the discomfort over and done with at once, thank you, so would the dentist kindly do both, please.

Eventually the dentist agreed, but obviously with some trepidation, and I sat and held Mark’s hand whilst the dentist pulled two of his teeth out.

He was admirably, magnificently stoic, with not so much as a flinch. This was a bit embarrassing from my point of view, because I have been known to make the most ghastly fuss at the dentist’s. I had to be fairly self-controlled not to make a fuss anyway, because it was all very dreadful, with creaking and snapping and blood, but Mark did not move a muscle. This was really brave, because he admitted later that it hurt, and I was very impressed.

He was a bit pale afterwards, but he shook the dentist’s hand and said that he had done a jolly good job, and the dentist said that he was very impressed with Mark’s courage in having two teeth done at once, and then I paid the bill and drove Mark home.

He wouldn’t go to bed like a proper ill person, but sat quietly in the rocking chair looking grey whilst I washed and tidied things away, and irritated him by repeatedly asking if he was all right.

Of course because we had known about the dentist we had already decided that we would not go to work tonight. To my shame I had been secretly looking forward to it a bit, because we almost never have a night off and just do what we feel like. Usually if we have a night off work it is because we have got something arranged that we are going to do, but tonight was all ours.

What we felt like doing was pulling the rocking chairs up in front of the fire and watching the first two episodes of something on Netflix called The Crown, because I had heard somebody  talking about it on Radio Four the other day and thought that I might like to see it. It turned out to be about the Queen in her youth, and we enjoyed it immensely, although we both kept shouting at the actor who played Prince Philip to stand up straight, which he didn’t.

Mark took some drugs for the pain in his mouth and we took the dogs over to the farm before we got ready for bed, because we are going to be out all day tomorrow collecting children, and it would be nice not to get home to dog poo on the carpet.

Mark has gone to bed now, because secretly he is feeling a bit more shaken than he would dream of owning up to, and I am sitting in my dressing gown writing to tell you all about it. It is strange not to have dogs, a bit nice because of not tripping over them or accidentally standing on tails and things, but mostly it is sad, because we like their hideous ugly smiles and their joy in life.

I shall be glad to get them back again.

I didn’t think it would be tactful to ask for a picture of Mark’s toothless mouth, so I have taken a picture of the shortbread instead.