islandhippy

An hour ago my second lower wisdom tooth was removed at Singapore General Hospital's National Dental Centre and I'm now back home in the care of Nurse Olive. When I dreamt of meeting a cute young SGH nurse I didn't expect her to be only seven months old.

The procedure must have been pretty fast as I was listening to Puccini's Manon Lescaut on my iPhone and I didn't get far into Act I before I could feel the dentist sewing up my gum. In fact, it was silly to try and listen to any music, all I could hear was the high-pitched whine of the drill and the occasional crack of dentine and enamel splitting. The dentist was very pleasant although I was a little nervous when, after I asked him whether he had trained in UK, he replied he would be going there for training soon! If he was going to practise on me before going to the UK, I felt obliged to correct his English part way through the operation. After injecting me once and saying it might feel like a bee sting, he then laughed, picked up the syringe again and said OK, it might feel like a bunch of bees. Eh, hello, "a bunch of bees?" I managed, before being stabbed in the mouth again. For those readers about to go for an impacted wisdom tooth extraction, let me reassure you that I felt no pain. No bee stings or any other pain from the drilling, hammering, pushing and pulling.

The most difficult part of the whole procedure was trying to tell the taxi driver to take me home to Portsdown Road. Porthdun Wode, pweath. P-o-r-t-h-d-u-n W-o-d-e ...