It’s never a good time to lose a filling, but with the country on lockdown and dentists only allowed to deal with emergencies, convincing a dentist that my broken tooth was an emergency felt like something of a challenge. The first dentist I tried told me to just take some paracetamol, which sounded like a lot of painkillers over the next few weeks.
I had more luck with the second dentist who asked if the broken tooth had any sharp corners. Oh yes, I replied, you can cut glass with this tooth. So it was that I was able to go to the dentist for an emergency filling this afternoon.
Except I didn’t get a filling.
It turns out that my wisdom (hah!) tooth has pushed against the molar so much that the molar has been deformed… Well, not exactly deformed but pushed over and squeezed to the extent that an emergency filling1 wouldn’t hold and I would be in a lot of pain in about four days time.
The only alternative was to extract the tooth.
To be fair, she did ask me in all seriousness whether I would prefer to have the pulled immediately or wait until the agony became unbearable.
Anyway, the deed is now done, both parts of the shattered tooth have been hygienically disposed of and I am supposed to avoid spicy food until the wound heals.
This could be a bit of a challenge.
Footnotes
- I actually do mean emergency filling here. Dentists are allowed to open for emergencies only, and certainly not for regular checkups. The dentist would have been able to plug the hole in my tooth as it was painful, but I would have still had to go back to get it redone after the lockdown had ended.
Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill 
Good you got it done.
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It is. From what the dentist said, it was likely to get a lot worse very quickly
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