Deanne Schildroth dot com

I went to the dentist this week.

Just a cleaning. Nothing exciting.

As I lay in the chair, reclined all the way back, overhead light shining, mouth agape, I thought of far I’d come. Going to the dentist isn’t a big deal. I get a morning off work, treat myself to coffee after the appointment, and go on with my day. But there was a time where the dentist was not such an easy visit.

Trauma is a funny little bugger. You go about your day thinking “I’m well adjusted, nothing gets to me. I’m real laid back and cool. I just have to avoid doing [this really mundane task that most people do all the time].” Trauma installs buttons in you so subtly that you don’t even realise it’s done anything for years and years.

Maybe you don’t even recognise it as a trauma. It’s just this little personality quirk you’ve always had. This is the thought I had as I was in the dentist chair, my hygienist hard at work scraping my mouth bones.

“Oh wow, I think I have a lot of dental trauma.”

When I was little, like kindergarten/grade 1 age, my elementary school had some kind of dental program. I don’t know if all schools had this, if it was because my school was in a working class neighbourhood, maybe it was just the 80s, all of the above? But one day, you’d be in your class, colouring a picture of a cat, or learning to spell “house”, and then your teacher would say “it’s your turn, you can go upstairs now”.

My first elementary school, where I attended from kindergarten through grade 4, was two floors. The floors were largely segregated by age, so I did not stay at the school long enough to graduate to classrooms upstairs. But I had been up there a few times – the principal’s office was there, and sometimes a “special” kid would be sent upstairs to the staff room to make coffee for their teacher. The 80s were fucking wild, y’all.

Also upstairs, the dentist. It was a small room with a reclining dental chair and not much else. I believe it was just to do check ups and cleanings. But there was never any warning. I don’t even know if my mom knew it was going to happen. There was never a conversation of “now this morning in school, you’re going to see a dentist.” Like I said, one minute I was just in class, then next minute I was told to walk alone, up the stairs, to the dentist office.

I remember being scared. Mostly because hey what the fuck is going on?? but also because it hurt.

Scraping and flossing and jamming the polishing tool in my mouth. No one was gentle. If I’d squirm or cry I’d be yelled at to settle down, it wouldn’t hurt if I’d bother to brush at home.

(Parenting was lax at my house. I don’t remember really being made to brush my teeth or wash my face before bed? More on that later).

Around the same age, I remember having to go to a regular dentist, near my school. I was shocked when it was the same dentist and hygienist. Don’t they live at the school?! Like the teachers?! Dread pooled in the pit of my stomach. I begged my mom to not have to leave the waiting room. I didn’t want to go back to the exam room, away from my mom, with these people that hurt me.

I remember more hurting and squirming and crying. The hygienist yelling at me that I need to BRUSH. Yelling! My mom later said she could hear me. Why didn’t she come save me? I always had a mouth full of silver as a kid, so I’m sure I got at least one filling that day.

A few years later, my auntie went to dental hygiene school and started working at a clinic in town. I feel like that was the next time I went to the dentist. We started going to her clinic where she would be the hygienist working on me. She was gentle, never yelled at me. The dentist was also nice, and patient. (As an adult, I now realise that gaps in dentist office visits weren’t completely due to lax parenting. At least part of that had to be related to whatever coverage my mom would have had at work).

As a teen, I still don’t remember going to the dentist a lot? Flossing was just not a thing I did. I’d brush my teeth before going to school in the morning, but that’s about all I ever thought of when it came to my teeth.

In college I had a tooth that kept bugging me. It hurt all the time. A piece of it had crumbled off, leaving a bit of a hole and the only bit of reprieve I could find was in sucking the inside of my cheek to fill that hole.

The dentist was expensive. And I was living in a different province from my family and I was sheltered as all hell. My mom did everything for me (if we talk about trauma again later, we can get into that). I didn’t know how to get a dentist appointment. I didn’t know how I would pay for it. I didn’t know anything.

My school friends noticed more and more that something was wrong. “I notice you’ve been sucking your cheek a lot and not eating. I think you should go to the dentist,” one friend commented. I learned how, if left untreated, it could become abscessed and travel to my brain. Oh damn.

So I called home, probably sobbing, and mom arranged for the same auntie from earlier in the story to help. By this time, she had married a dentist and they owned a dental clinic in a small town in the province I was going to school in. I still had to take a greyhound bus (remember those??) to the closest city, a couple hours away, and then she would pick me up. We arranged a whole weekend visit.

The clinic was on the same property as their house, on a large lot in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Beautiful does not begin to describe it. Since it was basically at my auntie’s house, they agreed to look at my tooth after hours. It turned out I needed a root canal. They would remove all the infection from my tooth, insert the gutta-percha into the canals, but I would have to come back for a crown.

I feel like at least part of the reason I went three hours away from my college town for this is because of money. Looking back, this was probably done for free by my aunt and uncle. Money was always discussed in rushed, hushed tones in my house (see trauma discussion three, I guess?).

To the surprise of…. no one, I never did get that crown. The tooth was stable for a while – possibly even years. But eventually it started to crumble. And hurt.

I ignored it for several months until I finally had to go get it looked at. I was afraid to eat anything hard or crunchy or sticky. At least on that side of my mouth. I was wracked with anxiety at all hours of the day.

What if my tooth falls out?

What if I go to the dentist and it costs a lot of money I don’t have?

What if the dentist is mean to me about not taking care of myself?

By this time I was back living in my home town, working a shitty call centre job with meagre benefits. I found a dentist that would direct-bill my insurance as I had zero dollars to pay upfront for this. They decided to fill the tooth and strongly suggested I get a crown. They would put in the pre-determination request with my insurance and if it was approved, I could come in soon for the crown.

I left the dentist already knowing I was not going back for the crown. I knew my coverage was only for 50% of the cost of a crown. I’d still have to come up with a few hundred dollars on my own. At that point in my life – mid-20s, student loans, living in a shitty one bedroom apartment, with no drivers license because it’s not like I could afford a car anyway – it might as well have been a million dollars.

So the filling held for a bit. I could eat carrots again!

But would you believe it? That tooth started to crumble again. I could feel a part of my gums with my tongue where my tooth should be.

I went back to the dentist and just had them pull it. They tried to talk me out of it, saying they could save it with a new root canal and crown. But that would cost upwards of $1000, while an extraction would cost $100. Get the pliers.

All this time, and I was still not flossing regularly. Brushing my teeth in the morning, but not very often at night. I certainly wasn’t going to regular cleanings or check ups. My depression – and undiagnosed/untreated Bipolar Disorder II – made simple tasks difficult and what the fuck was the point in taking care of my teeth?

One day, a piece of (what I thought was) tooth fell out of the front of my mouth.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Why am I like this? Why did I do this? It was like having a mountain of debt and no idea of how to pay it back. All my teeth are so fucked and I don’t know how to fix any of them.

I made another appointment with the dentist, and explained that a piece of my tooth had fallen off, but I couldn’t see where. But it was white (ok, beige) and hard, like a tooth.

In the meantime, I started Googling, because that’s what you should do with your medical symptoms. After a few minutes, I was pretty sure it was calculus. Hardened dental plaque covered the back of my lower front teeth.

That’s gross and embarrassing to talk about, even today. My teeth had always kinda looked the same, so I didn’t realise that you should be able to see individual teeth in your mouth. It shouldn’t just be a ridge of white (ok, beige).

When I went to the dentist this time around, they looked and agreed that yes, it was just calculus, not a tooth breaking off, and I desperately needed a cleaning. They’d have to book me in for a later date, because they needed a larger block of time to do the scaling that was needed.

The dental staff were all so nice and accommodating. They booked me in for their last appointment of the day a few days later, so I wouldn’t have to take time off work. I could walk over from my office (I was now downtown with a better job and benefits) and start the scaling process.

The hygienist assured me it probably wasn’t that bad, but when I opened my mouth she remarked, quietly, “oh. My god.” Those words still ring in my ears today.

But we got to work scraping and chipping and scaling. After the initial shock wore off, the hygienist was very gentle and sweet. We took breaks as needed, because y’all, that hurt. There was so much blood. I probably cried because hey, I cry about everything.

I was in the chair for an hour.

But my teeth were scaled and polished and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I had individual teeth! There were little spaces in between them! This didn’t bother me as I have always liked “natural” smiles. No braces or veneers for me. I love teeth with character. A friend of mine has a large gap in her lower teeth and I love looking at her smile.

I gave them my insurance details at the front desk and made an appointment for a couple fillings I was going to need.

I stepped out into light drizzle, my purple 4th Gen iPod Nano playing Gogol Bordello’s Super Taranta! as I walked to the hospital to meet up with my family, who were visiting my mom. The hits keep coming, and they don’t stop coming, eh? It’s funny how a memory can get burned in someone’s brain so deeply.

The dentist. That purple iPod. Gogol Bordello. The 30 minute walk under darkening skies.

Over the next several months, all my molars were filled. I lost one more because I was unable to pay for a root canal and crown. Even with better benefits, I was still going to need to pay 50% out of pocket and I just didn’t have it. So I have a space on the lower right and one on the upper left. I like the sensation of running my teeth through the spaces.

From that point on, I was getting cleanings every 6 months like clock work. I was brushing morning and night, but still wasn’t great at flossing. But hey – they’ll just scale it off when I go for my cleaning, right?

I was still so nervous about going to the dentist, even for a cleaning. What if they yelled at me for not taking better care of myself? In some ways, I was still that 5 year old kid, confused and crying about why everyone was mad at her not brushing well enough.

Last year, at a cleaning, I think I even apologised for the state of my teeth. The hygienist said some people just had more acidic (I think that was the word she used) saliva, which made plaque build up faster than other people. I could floss and floss and floss and would still need a good deal of scaling. And hey, she reminded me, it keeping her employed!

I would get a cleaning and then spend days marveling at the little space in between my two lower front teeth. The space that inevitably filled up with plaque throughout the year as my flossing got lackadaisical.

As I prepared for this week’s dentist visit, I was surprised to see that the space hadn’t “filled up” this time around. That is so gross and embarrassing, still. I know. I’m an educated, well read, traveled woman. And I still sometimes struggle with simple things like this.

But in the past 6 months, I had flossed just that little bit more to keep my gappy teeth still mostly gappy.

They’re not bright white, they’re spaced more than what would be considered “ideal”, and a couple are missing. I’m so glad I never got wisdom teeth because I can only imagine what kind of mess that would have made.

My teeth tell a story. A story of a lower-middle-class kid who wasn’t given a chance. Who had trauma installed at a very young age and didn’t even know it until they were almost 45.

My teeth tell the story of resilience.