Happy New Year! Been a bit slack with the old blog for the last umm, few months or something? I hope everyone is doing well.

My start to the new year is mainly scary. Scary standing on the scales. Scary looking at my bank account. Scary being almost 40. And very, very scary because I’m having a wonky wisdom tooth extracted next week with no sedation.

Like a lot of poor Brits I lost my NHS dentist recently. Though technically this was (kind of) my fault due to not going in five years and being stuck off the list. In my defence – COVID and multiple bouts of tonsillitis contributed to this poor showing. Prior I had been regularly since a kid, you know, twice a year regular.

Anyway. I got stuck off, had to find a private dentist – £120 for the initial consultation and £85 per hygienist trip to try and get my manky molars back in shape (ouch, in both senses of the word).

My new dentist also pointed out that a wisdom tooth I’d had for almost 20 years was decaying – and decaying the tooth next to it so I most definitely had to have it taken out.

Eek.

Because it’s impacted and growing on its side it’s too complicated for a regular dentist and I’m having it done in a private clinic. So that was £64 for the X-ray and then £700 for the extraction. That is not a typo – £700 for the extraction. No consultation with the dental surgeon beforehand because that would have been £200 – and no sedation either – that would have been a further £300.

Now I might be a bit of a wimp but I’m not a ‘I spent a grand having one tooth removed’ wimp, so I’m grinning and bearing it. I mean, how bad can it be? Please don’t answer that. I will be back with an update as to just how awful it was next week.

Oh, and to add complete insult to injury…I have a smear test the following day.

Happy New Year!

And don’t forget – if you have an NHS dentist still then please hold on to them with a vicelike grip and never ever let them go.