Last summer, while chewing on a sandwich in Sandymount Green, my two front teeth came loose and fell out. My bridge, the centre of my mouth for 8 long years had finally collapsed, leaving me to pick up the pieces and run back to their maker: The Dublin Dental School and Hospital.

The hospital has a number of clinics and specialist units as well as an Accident and Emergency area and it was here I returned last July to get my bridge re-attached. After explaining to reception what had happened, I was told to take a ticket and wait. Thankfully this A&E is not as grim as other hospitals, so I didn’t have to watch too much Sky News on TV before I was seen to.

The student dentist re-sealed my teeth in minutes and sent me on my merry way. As my belly was grumbling, I decided to go to a nearby café for a spot of lunch. I knew I had to be careful with my newly-cemented gnashers so I took the first bite of my panini out of the corner of my mouth.

You can imagine my shock as my bridge decided to tumble out of my mouth for the second time in two days. Teeth in hand, I legged it back to the hospital and the A+E dentist.

The student had only fitted a temporary bridge, but still I expected to last longer than one bite of a ham sandwich. The next fitting was more successful and managed to stay put long enough, until another student decided it was time to get to work on a more permanent replacement.

I have always had trouble with teeth. Since as long as I can remember I have been visiting men and women in white gowns with long needles. They told me to cut down on sweet things and brush after every meal.

I was a good little boy and did what I was told, but still my teeth hurt. As I grew older the visits became no less frequent and my mouth started filling up with metal. In my early twenties, my regular dentist told me my two front teeth were decayed and would have to come out and be replaced by dentures. He tried to explain to me that it might feel strange at first but I would soon get used it.

He wasn’t kidding about feeling strange. As soon as my new plastic teeth were fitted, I felt prematurely old. Here was I, a young guy not long out of college and I was putting my teeth into a glass every night just like the old folks.

It was humiliating and on more than one occasion a little embarrassing. I was in Scotland with some friends visiting the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond in the Highlands. We were driving up from Edinburgh when we stopped for some lunch at a branch of KFC.

My teeth weren’t on my mind at all as I ordered a Corn on the Cob to go. One quick bite later and my denture was embedded in the corn. The cry of anguish from me in the back seat of the car and the sight of half my gob in the cob was enough to send my two female friends into fits of almost hysterical laughter. The laughter only intensified as I, with increasing frustration tried to fit the dentures back into my gums upside down.

Another episode occurred shortly afterwards. I was out one night with some friends in a club. I got talking to a woman and things were going well. We went on the dance floor for a little boogie-woogie. The music was really loud and we had to shout to make ourselves heard. Well, you can imagine what happened next…

In mid-conversation my teeth flew out of my head at considerable velocity and struck my companion on the chest. To hide my mortified face, I quickly bent down to retrieve my missing molars. Needless to say, as soon as I found them and placed in their rightful place again, the object of my desires has departed. God only knows what she thought of me.

Nowadays, of course dentistry has become a lot more sophisticated and the extraction of teeth, especially front teeth is very much a thing of the past. The policy of the Dublin Dental Hospital is very much anti-extraction and there are all sorts of procedures to save your precious pearlies.
The hospital is similar to other hospitals in that as soon as you go in with one complaint, they examine you thoroughly and find something else wrong with you!

Since last summer, I have been back to Lincoln Place on more than a dozen occasions. Long-term, the plan is to replace my bridge with an implant (I will spare you the gory details) but in the meantime, a lot of my Monday mornings are now taken up with me lying on the dentist’s chair while my young student dentist drills and fills away in every crevice of my mouth.
To pass the time, I often daydream about having teeth so white, so shiny and so perfect, they could get work on Hollywood movies.

“Are your teeth ready for their close-up now, Mr. Kelly?”

The Dublin Dental School and Hospital is part of University of Dublin, Trinity College and is situated beside the College entrance on Lincoln Place.

Under the supervision of qualified dentists, undergraduate and postgraduate students offer a course of treatment to the general public.

The Accident and Emergency unit is open from 8.30am Monday to Friday.
Fees are charged for hospital services but are generally less than you would pay in private practice. If you are in possession of a Medical Card, there is no charge.
Contact the hospital on 612 7200 or 612 7391