Tag Archives: dentist

Gifts of the grateful

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In the 1980s, I visited my friends in the former Yugoslavia frequently. Also, I visited Albania and what is now independent Kosovo. During my trips, I picked up a large vocabulary of Serbo-Croat, including quite a selection of outrageous swear words. Grammar has always been beyond me in foreign languages, and often in my own. My interest in Albania and my brief visits to Albanian-speaking parts of the Balkans resulted in me acquiring some vocabulary in Albanian, but far less than in Serbo-Croat. Until the 1990s, I believed that my fragmentary knowledge of these languages would be useless outside the Balkans.

gift 2

Prizren in Kosovo, pre-1990

During one trip to Belgrade, a friend arranged for me to be an observer in a clinic of a leading oral surgeon. I turned up at a large hospital and spent a couple of hours watching the surgeon reviewing a series of his patients. Although I was grateful to be allowed to watch the great man, I learned little that was relevant to practising dentistry. However, one aspect of this clinic interested me greatly. As each patient entered the consulting room, he or she presented the surgeon with a gift: a bottle, a large piece of cheese, a ham, etc.

The last patient to enter, a man in a somewhat shabby suit, entered and sat in the dental chair without having presented a gift. After his mouth had been examined, the surgeon took the patient and me out into a corridor. We walked through the hospital to a room with locked doors. My host unlocked it, we entered, and he locked the doors behind us. After a brief conversation, the patient handed the surgeon a small brown envelope, which he thrust into his jacket pocket. Then, after the doors were unlocked, the patient went one way, and we went another way. As we walked along the corridor, my host patted the pocket containing the envelope, and before bidding me farewell, said: “Pornographic photographs.”

gift 5 saraj

Poster of Marshal Tito in Sarajevo, Bosnia in the 1980s

My last visit to Yugoslavia was in May 1990.  Soon after that, wars broke out in the Balkans, and the former Yugoslavia disintegrated painfully to form smaller independent states. In the early to mid-1990s, there was terrible strife in Bosnia. Many people fled as refugees to places including the UK. In the late 1990s, Kosovo suffered badly from warfare between the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians. Many of the latter fled to the UK.

I moved from one dental practice outside London to another in London, an inner-city practice, in 2001. A significant number of my patients there had come from the former Yugoslavia as refugees. I was the only person in the practice who could greet them in Serbo-Croat or Albanian. Maybe, I was only one of a few dentists in London at that time who had this ability.

To the Albanian speakers my vocabulary was restricted to words such as ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye’, which brought smiles to their faces. Following a trip to Communist Albania in 1984, I recalled the Albanian words of political slogans such as “Long live Enver Hoxha”, “Enver’s party”, and “Long live the Peoples’ Party of Albania.” As many of my Albanian patients had come from Kosovo rather than Albania, these slogans meant little to most of them.

gift 3 travnik

Travnik, Bosnia, 1975

My limited Serbo-Croat was more extensive than my Albanian. I could entertain some of my Bosnian and Serbian patients with polite small-talk. Many of the ex-Yugoslav patients, like those I had seen long before in Belgrade, brought me gifts. Even those, with whom I felt I was not getting along with well, brought me, usually, bottles of home-made alcohol (e.g. rakia, slivovitz, and loza) that had been distilled by relatives who had stayed behind in the former Yugoslavia. These strong alcoholic drinks were delicious, smooth, and delicately flavoured. One fellow plied me with DVDs of the latest Hollywood and other films that he had ‘pirated’. One lovely lady from Bosnia presented me with a pair of earrings, which her uncle had made, to give to my wife. She wears these often, and she is very grateful.

gift 4

Many Middle-Eastern patients also felt that it was appropriate to bring me gifts. Thus, a lot of delicious baklava and other similar confections came my way. Delicious as these were, they were neither good for my teeth nor for my general health. A Hungarian family kept me supplied with large gifts of paprika powder, and there was a Romanian gentleman who brought me nice bottles of wine. Incidentally, the only words of Romanian I know are “thank you” and “railway timetable”. Once, we employed a Romanian dental nurse and I told her my Romanian party-piece “Mersul trenurilor.” She pondered for a moment and then replied “Ah, the programme of the trains.”

Once, my dental nurse, a friendly West Indian lady, and I were standing near a window facing the main road when a delivery van stopped nearby. A man was delivering trays of baklava to a nearby shop. I said to my nurse: “Why don’t you see if he’ll give us some to try?” She returned with a tray of baklava. Carelessly, because I was in a hurry to see my next patient, I put a large lump of baklava into my mouth, and then bit hard on it. As I was doing this, I heard a deafening bang in my head. The baklava was not too fresh. I had split a molar tooth into two parts, the smaller of which was loose in my gum.

gifts 1

Baklava

Unlike this disastrous piece of confectionary, the gifts kindly given to me by my patients did no harm. Furthermore, what I believed to be a useless tiny vocabulary of Balkan languages proved to be quite useful.  

Finally, you might still be wondering whether anybody ever took me aside to present me with an envelope containing pornographic photographs. To satisfy your curiosity, I can tell you that nobody did.

Pilgrim on a ‘plane

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While I was practising as a dentist, people at parties often asked me what I did for a living. Telling them what I did often brought the conversation to a quick conclusion.

MARY

Medjugorje is a small town in Bosnia and Herzogovina. Between 1942 and ’45 during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, over sixty Roman Catholic friars were killed there, allegedly by Communist resistance fighters. In 1981, when this area was still part of the former Yugoslavia, some six children claimed to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary. Despite opposition by the Yugoslav authorities, Medjugorje rapidly became a place of pilgrimage. The authorities softened their opposition to this during the last few years leading up to the country’s tragic disintegration.

I used to visit friends in Belgrade often during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. I flew back and forth, often on flights operated by Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (‘JAT’), one of Yugoslavia’s two major airlines, the other being the former Aviogenex. A friend of mine in Belgrade was once looking after some visiting German bankers, when he told them:

“Yugoslavia has two state airlines. Germany only has one … now that the Luftwaffe has been closed down.”

Many of the JAT flights between Belgrade and London touched down at Zagreb to pick up passengers. In the ‘80s, Zagreb was an airport used by pilgrims visiting Medjugorje. I was travelling back to London with a friend from Belgrade. We had occupied two of a set of three seats. We used the middle seat, which was free when we boarded, to store some of our hand-baggage. Many people boarded at Zagreb, including a man who occupied the middle seat. He told us that he had just been to Medjugorje, and asked my friend:

“Do you believe in the Blessed Virgin Mary?”

“I would love to discuss that with you,” she said, “but not now because I have a terrible headache.”

The pilgrim turned to me, and then asked me something.

Not having heard it properly because of the noise made by the ‘plane’s engines, I replied:

“I am a dentist, actually.”

After that, our initially chatty pilgrim neighbour did not say a word during the flight to London.

African meeting

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Timewarp_500

All of the relatives in my parents’ generation were born in South Africa. Some might say that they were ‘Africans’ although many Africans might not agree. One of these always arrived at our house at least an hour before we had invited him, and another usually did not arrive until one hour after we had invited him. My parents, on the other hand, were sticklers for punctuality.

For several years, I worked in a dental practice, which might have well been described as the “United Nation of bad teeth.” My patients had originated from all over the world. They came from, for example: Brazil, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, the West Indies, Spain, Portugal, tropical and southern Africa, the former Yugoslavia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ireland, and a few from the UK. Few of them appreciated the importance of punctuality.

We operated an appointment system in the practice. Patients booked specific times on particular days for their chance to visit me or one of my colleagues. Most of them either turned up at the wrong time or not at all. Consequently, my days were broken up into periods of frenetic activity separated by periods of inactivity, plenty of time to read a book.

One afternoon, a Tunisian gentleman turned up for his appointment at the right time on the correct day. I was so surprised that I said to him:

“How nice. You’ve come on time. Most of my other patients are not as courteous as you. They come whenever they feel like it, if at all.”

The patient listened, removed his coat, sat in my dental chair, and then said:

“Yes, that what we call in French ‘rendez-vous africaine’”

Somehow, after hearing that, my patients’ erratic attendance and timing began to make sense with me, and no longer bothered me. It also chimed with the erratic timings of some of my South African relatives.

Safety first!

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Experience learn’d

damages suffer’d

must consider safety first

 

My late mother was involved in a motor car accident near Cape Town in South Africa when she was a young girl in the 1930s.

HBY 60s 36 HW

“Our family dentist, at least the first one who ever looked after me (during the 1950s and early 1960s), was Dr Samuels, an elderly Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. This kindly man, who must have been in his late 60s or early 70s when he treated me, told my mother how he had to smuggle gold out of Germany. When he, and for that matter any other Jew, was fleeing from Germany in the 1930s, it was not permitted to carry anything of financial value out of the country. His resourceful wife prepared sandwiches for his journey. Instead of filling them with lettuce leaves, she filled them with sheets of gold leaf – a material that used to be used a great deal in dentistry. Thus, if he had encountered inquisitive Nazi officials on the train, he could have concealed the gold he was carrying by munching his precious sandwiches. I am not sure when he retired, but I remember him telling my mother that he would not cease practising until the last of his patients abandoned him. I do not know when this was, but I do know that he helped to conceal from us the fact that my mother was missing some teeth.

 

In all the 28 years that I knew her, I had no inkling that my mother had two missing front teeth. I knew that she had missing teeth because she often reminded us about the accident that she had suffered, but it was not until she was dead that I discovered, almost by chance, that it was two of her front teeth that she lost.

 

FIAT 1100 60s BSY

I am sure that it was having been involved in this accident that led to my mother having seat-belts installed in our Fiat Millecento. She arranged for this to be done at least 20 years before they became mandatory in the UK. I have no idea how and from where she got the idea of installing car seat-belts in 1960, but she did. And, with a little persistence she found somewhere where these items, which were almost unknown in cars, could be installed in our Fiat.

 

Seat-belts were not routinely fitted into cars before the 1980s, with the exception of some Swedish cars such as Saab and Volvo. There were very few of these on British roads in the early 1960s. Therefore, my mother’s idea of installing them into our Millecento in 1960 was little short of revolutionary. The two front seats of the car were fitted with complex harnesses. A strap went over each of the wearer’s shoulders and these were connected together by a waist strap. The people in the front ended up wearing what looked like the sort of safety harness worn by a jet pilot. These complicated straps were extremely difficult to adjust properly.

 

The rear of the car was fitted with two lap straps such as are found in aircraft passenger seats. My sister and I used one each except when there was a third person in the back. In this case, my sister and I had to share one strap. To avoid fighting, my mother separated us in the strapby placing a pillow between us.”

 

The passage written above is an extract from a book, “Charlie Chaplin Waved to Me”.  It does not mention the extra locks my mother had fitted in the rear doors of our car. These were to prevent my sister and me from opening the doors while were diving. Had we been in an accident, it would have made it very difficult for rescuers to open these doors as the keys were attched to the ring with the car keys.

 

I only learnt about my mother’s missing fron teeth when after her tragic demise, I found her partial denture lying around in our house.

 

“Charlie Chaplin Waved to Me” is available by clicking : HERE

Also available on Kindle

Switch it off, please

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Over the airwaves,

messages of faith are heard,

evangelising

 

radio

 

‘Mark’, the owner of the first dental practice where I worked after qualifying, told me that it is important to have a good relationship with the dental nurse with whom you work. He pointed out that on working days, the dentist often spends more of his or her waking hours with the nurse than with his or her spouse. During the 35 years I practised as a dentist, I encountered very few dental nurses with whom I could not get on amicably. Let me tell you about ‘Maria’, who was kind, resourceful, and remarkable.

Maria fled to the UK after having had what sounded like a horrendous childhood and adolescence in a troubled part of the world. She worked with me for several years. Sometimes, when needed, she worked as a dental receptionist in our practice. When, as they often did, patients came storming up to the desk, impolitely demanding an appointment without even saying “please”, Maria would calmly reply: “Good morning, Mr X. How are you? And how is your family?” Her polite questioning in a soothing voice quickly ‘civilised’ the patient’s approach.

Once, I was running very late, and the patient I had kept waiting had only 15 minutes left out of the 60 minute appointment I had planned for him. I said to this patient: “I have run so late that I really don’t have enough time to do what we planned.” Before the patient could answer, Maria said to me: “Don’t be silly, Mr Yamey, you can do it in time. I know it.” And she was right. I could not have done a decent job so fast if Maria had not been my assistant. When it came to the time to prepare the dental impression (mould) for the crown (cap) I was preparing, she mixed the two elements – the firm base and the low-viscosity material that picks up fine detail – simultaneously. Ambidextrously, she mixed one constituent with one hand and the other with her other hand. We finished the job to my clinical satisfaction in a quarter of the time I usually needed. “See, you can do it,” she said, “I have faith in you.”

You might wonder why I did not speed up after that when working with Maria. During that curtailed appointment, fortunately everything went smoothly without hitches. I preferred longer appointments so that I would have sufficient time to deal with unexpected problems and to relax the often-anxious patients.

Maria was very practical. In the practice where we worked, equipment often broke down. When this happened, a repair man, ‘H’, would be called to do just enough to get the heavily-used, well-worn piece of equipment to work again. On one occasion, an essential piece of kit stopped working. I told Maria to ring H. She said: “He’s not needed.” I asked her why. “I watched what H did last time the drill broke down. Let me try.” Maria fiddled with the equipment for a few minutes, and successfully repaired it.

Maria was a devout Christian.  She kept a small volume of the New Testament in a drawer in the surgery. Some of the words in it were printed in red. I asked her why, and she explained that the words that Jesus spoke were printed in red. Every now and then, she used to say to me: “All you need to do, Mr Yamey, is to accept Jesus in your heart, and your soul will be saved.”  Out of politeness, not wishing to offend her by questioning her great faith, I would say: “I need more time to think about it.”

We had a radio playing continuously in the surgery. Maria had tuned it to a non-stop evangelical Christian station. Various people speaking with strong North American accents spent hours describing how they had discovered Jesus. Like quite a few of my patients at that practice, many of the speakers on the radio had been locked up in prison. During their long incarceration, the radio personalities had had time to contemplate life, and during this contemplation they had discovered Our Lord and taken Him into their hearts. I found this radio station quite fascinating and listened to it avidly in gaps between appointments. Maria seemed less interested in the broadcasts. She wandered in and out of the surgery when she was not needed to help with a patient’s treatment.

Mr ‘C’ was a regular attender. He had a barely discernible North American accent. On one occasion, just as I was about to begin treating his teeth, he raised a hand, and said: “There are two things I can’t stand. One is coming to the dentist. The other is having religion stuffed down my throat. Maria, please switch off the radio.”

Maria turned it off without argument – she never argued. From that moment onwards, Maria never ever tuned the radio to that evangelical station. She was not only a wonderful assistant, but also sensitive and thoughtful.

The boys from South London

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mobile phone stolen

contacts imag-es vanish:

 modern  tragedy

 

phone

For several years I worked in a west London practice near Portobello Road . My patients came from families that had originated in many parts of the world. Almost all of them had lively characters. They were not your average quiet provincial types, who respect professionals – a bit too much in my opinion. They were unpredictable in their punctuality and behaviour. This made every one of my working days exciting, sometimes a bit too much so.

‘J’ was a frequent attender with many dental concerns. Although he made appointments, I could be sure that the appointment times were those that he was least likely to appear at the surgery. His timing was erratic to say the least.

When J arrived, he ignored the reception desk and would come straight into my surgery even if I was already treating a patient. If I was in the midst of treating someone, he would respect my asking him to wait until I was free. He would then hover around outside my surgery, and if the wait was too long for him he would disappear, only to reappear unannounced and unexpectedly a few days or weeks later.

One afternoon when I was free, J, who was not a nervous patient, ran into my surgery. He was too agitated to sit down in my dental chair. Instead, he leant against one of the walls of my small room.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“It’s bad, man.”

“Can you tell me about it? Do you want to talk?” I asked.

“My mobile ‘phone has been nicked.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I know who took it.”

“Really,” I said, “then, can’t you get it back?”

“I don’t know, man. But, I know who nicked it, and I am going to get the boys from South London to put him six feet under.”

Having said those worrying words, he settled into my dental chair.

A long holiday

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To tell the truth
there is nowt as bad as
a pain in a rotten tooth
hallway with window

 

When I worked in a dental practice near Portobello Road in west London, I met a lot of ‘colourful’ characters, many of whom I might have avoided had I saw them approaching me by chance in the street. One fellow, Ted, a large patient whose nose had been broken at least once and been badly fixed, said to me once: “If anyone ever causes you trouble in the street, just say you’re a friend of Ted. That’ll warn them.”

One day while I was standing in a queue at a takeaway counter waiting to order lunch, someone standing near me, a patient of mine, said: “Need a motor, doc?” I answered that I did not need a car at that point of time. “No problem, Doc,” he replied, “when you need one, just tell me what you want, whatever colour and make, and I’ll get it for you.” Not willing to sound ungrateful, I thought that when he said “get”, he really meant “steal.”

I had many patients who had been in and out of trouble with the law. Often, I would be told: “Look what the prison dentist did to this tooth, doc. Bleeding butcher, he was. Ought to be put behind bars.” I never asked why my patients had spent time ‘inside’. I felt it would be better not to know.

The last patient before one lunchtime was an aggressive young man. He was accompanied by his friend, a slightly older man. Before I had time to ask the young fellow what was wrong, he told me. Pointing to a lower left premolar tooth, he said: “Get it out. It’s f…..g killing me.” I looked at the chap. His mouth did not seem to close properly. “Don’t just stand there. Get it out, man”. I looked at the tooth. It looked alright. It was neither decayed, nor wobbly, nor tender. That strange mandibular posture bothered me.  

 

“You’ve broken your jaw,” I said. “Don’t give me that crap. Just take it out.” I said: “If I take it out, you will still be in pain. You need to go to a hospital to fix your jaw.” This only angered the patient more, and I began to fear for the integrity of my jaw. “I’m not leaving until you take it out.” “Then,” I replied, “I’ll ring for an ambulance.” The patient’s friend said: “Come on, mate, let’s go.” Reluctantly, the patient allowed his friend to drag him out into the street. I locked the practice for the lunch break, relieved to see them leave.

Some days later, I met the patient’s friend in the street. I asked him whether the young man had been to hospital. He did not answer my question. Instead he said: “He’s gone away.” “On holiday?” I queried innocently. “Yes, on holiday.” “Long holiday?” I asked, beginning to understand what he meant by ‘holiday’. “Yes, very long holiday”.

 

Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

 

Don’t ever use aftershave!

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CASIO

 

When I was a child living in north-west London in the early 1960s, I used to accompany my mother on shopping expeditions in the West End. I loved going into the centre of London because I considered that Hampstead Garden Suburb, where we lived, was pretty, but pretty dull – a cemetery for the living! We used to take the Underground to Oxford Circus. Our first port of call after leaving the ‘tube’ station was Dickins and Jones, a now no longer existing department store on Regent Street. It closed in 2007, long after my mother died.

Like many other department stores, Dickins and Jones devoted its ground floor to displays of cosmetics and perfumes. On one visit, when we were walking through the over-fragrant ground floor of the store, a sales-lady working behind one of the many stalls, each representing a different cosmetics company, beckoned to me. I pointed towards myself, and she nodded, meaning she really did mean me. I walked over to her, and then without my saying anything, she said: “Sonny, never ever use after-shave lotion on your skin. Now, get along.”  I have never forgotten her advice, nor disobeyed it. I was about twelve years old then.

As I moved into my teens, and I began needing to shave, I was inundated with gifts of after-shave. Well-meaning friends of my parents and adult relatives gave me numerous gifts of cuff-links, which I have never used, and copious bottles of after-shave, which I dared not use. The unopened bottles piled up in my wardrobe and gathered dust.

Many years later, I became a dental student. From the second year onwards, we treated real live patients. They had either referred themselves for free treatment at the dental hospital or they had been referred by general practitioners who could not handle their problems. Many of them made multiple visits. Treatment at the hands of students was often slow. Some grateful patients gave me gifts either during their course of treatment or at the last visit.

One of my patients was a young lady from the Far East. She was always accompanied by her little son, aged not more than four years. Whenever I gave his mother a local anaesthetic, he would pipe up: “Look Mama, dentist man coming with needle. Look Mama, dentist man… etc.” When her course of treatment ended, she presented me with what I regarded as a wonderful gift, a treasure. It was a Casio digital watch with a tiny calculator keyboard attached to it. This was given to me in the late 1970s, and these watches had only been available for a very short time.

Someone, who came to dinner with my parents in the 1970s, brought us a gift of a box of chocolates made by Floris Chocolates, a company that no longer exists. I remember that the chocolates were far, far better than any I had ever tasted. So, it was with some excitement that I unwrapped a gift which a happy patient had given me after I had made him a set of dentures at the dental school. It was a box labelled ‘Floris’. At the end of the day, I took my gift home, and opened it with great anticipation and high expectations. My heart sunk when I found that the box contained not chocolates, but small bottles of fragrant perfumes. I gifted these to a friend.

J, an attractive young lady, became one of my patients at the dental school. I asked her what she did for a living. She told me that she sold men’s fragrances at a leading London department store (not Dickins and Jones). She asked me: “Have you heard of Brut?” I said that I had heard of the company. “Well, I represent Brut at the store,” she told me. “Do you use fragrances?” she inquired politely. “No,” I answered. “Oh, that doesn’t surprise me. Hardly any doctors or dentists seem to use them.” I was sure how to interpret this and hoped that I was not smelling unpleasant. “I’ll bring you some next appointment,” she told me cheerfully.

On the next visit, the Brut seller, true to her word, presented me with a large box, saying: “See how you get on with these.” I took the box home at the end of the day and examined its contents. It was filled with little bottles labelled with names that I found mysterious: ‘pre-shower splash’, ‘shower splash’, after-shower splash’, pre-shave rinse’, ‘shaving splash’, and (the to be avoided) ‘after-shave lotion’. No instructions were provided, so this well-meant gift was consigned to the wardrobe. After what the lady in Dickins and Jones had advised me, I was not going to risk the after-shave lotion nor any of the other even more curiously named products.

With the exception of the cosmetic products, I have received many other gifts over the years, most of which have given me great pleasure. These gifts, useful or not, have been given by grateful patients who have either also paid me or have been treated free of charge courtesy of the NHS. More than my earnings, which were, of course, very important, even a simple heartfelt ‘thank you’ made  me feel that doing dentistry was worthwhile.

Garlic and parsley

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PSX_20180917_175556.jpg

 

My late mother was a good cook. I know that you will think that often children praise their mother’s cooking however awful it is. In the case of my mother, her cooking was praised by many people, who still remember her skills in the kitchen many years after her demise at an early age. My mother was a keen disciple of the pioneering food writer Elizabeth David, who helped introduce Mediterranean cuisine to the British. Many recipes from the Mediterranean involve the use of garlic and parsley.

Although my mother did not permit my sister and me to cook in her kitchen, we were ordered to be in the kitchen with her either to keep her company and/or to do the washing-up. Our presence in the kitchen and proximity to a skilled cook engendered a life-long love of cooking in both my sister and me. When my mother died, I took over her kitchen and learned, by trial and error, how to cook. My sister did the same and ran a restaurant successfully for quite a few years.

Many of the dishes I cooked, and still make, contained copious amounts of garlic. This was not a problem until I qualified as a dentist, and moved to a practice in Kent, about 80 kilometres from London in distance, although it felt much further culturally and in many other ways.

Friends have often asked me whether the mouths that I treated emitted bad smells. The short answer is that although they might be malodorous occasionally, the dentist rarely smells them while treating the patient. However, the converse is true for the patient. In modern practice, the patient is often almost horizontal on the treatment chair. He or she can easily smell the dentist’s breath.

Soon after I began practising in Kent, I lived in local rented accommodation. I cooked for myself in the evenings, often preparing dishes with large amounts of delicious garlic.

One morning, Mrs G, a late middle-aged woman, attended my surgery. Soon after I had lowered the chair to a semi-reclined position, I commenced working on her teeth. In those days, the early 1980s, dentists did not routinely wear surgical gloves, nor did they wear facemasks. A paper facemask such as became ‘de rigueur’ after the beginning of the AIDs (HIV) epidemic, would not have prevented what was to occur after I began treating Mrs G.

After I had been at work for about a minute, Mrs G swept her hand in front of her mouth, and exclaimed: “Ooooh, Mr Yamey, you’ve been eating garlic.” I apologised, and from that day onwards I never ate garlic on a day before I was due to work.  

After I had been in practice for about twelve years, I began working in inner London instead of ‘extra-terrestrial’ Kent. My patients in London came from all over the world, and most of them ate at least as much garlic as I do. The garlic restriction that I exercised in Kent became unnecessary.

Parsley was another problem I faced when I first arrived in Kent. I used to buy my lunch at the local Tesco supermarket. Many of its employees were patients in the practice where I worked. In addition to sandwiches and potato crisps, I enjoyed eating something containing chocolate with my midday meal. Many was the time when the lady at the check-out till would hold my Mars bar or Crunchie up in the air, and then shout at the top of her voice: “Look what the dentist is eating.” I digress.

One summer’s day, I needed some parsley for something I wanted to cook. I entered the local Tesco and asked an assistant where this herb was kept in the shop. Surprised by my request, she answered: “Sorry, love, we only get that in at Christmas.” I was shocked. Only an hour and a half’s drive away in London, parsley was available throughout the year. The Medway Towns, where I worked, were trapped in a 1950’s time-warp when I first arrived there. By the early 1990s, when I shifted to London, the area was emerging gradually into the present.

Why I practised dentistry

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UCL 1 University College London Portico

University College London Portico

I retired from dentistry exactly one year ago. This is how I got started 36 years ago…

I began studying dentistry after I had completed my PhD in physiology in 1976. My original intention was to obtain a clinical degree so that I would be able to widen the choice of post-doctoral opportunities beyond the field of specialisation relating to my doctoral thesis.

I entered the dental school at University College London (‘UCH’) ‘armed’ with a doctorate. There were two kinds of teaching staff at the school. The academic staff were attached to the University and the clinical ‘demonstrators’ were dentists who came into the hospital on a part-time basis to assist with teaching in the clinics where the students learned to treat patients. All the demonstrators used to address me as ‘Doctor Yamey’, but the academic staff, many of whom did not have PhDs, used to address me as ‘Mister Yamey’.

At the end of each course we studied, we would have to pass an examination. This consisted of a written paper along with a practical examination. All of the examinations included a face-to-face spoken test, a ‘viva-voce’ (or ‘viva’).

During my pharmacology viva, I was asked several questions by a pair of examiners. One of the examiners told me that I had answered one question incorrectly. I was sure that I had answered correctly, so I said: “I am certain that what I have said is right.” The two examiners looked at each other, and I began to worry. Then, the examiner who had not contradicted me said: “You know, he’s right.”

During another viva, the task was to look at a microscope slide, and then to comment on it to the examiners. When I had looked at the slide, I turned to examiners, and thought I heard one of them saying: “Where is it from?” Absentmindedly, I said: “It’s an unusual surname. It originates from Lithuania.” I had thought that I was being asked about my name, rather than the slide. Fortunately, I was able to give a satisfactory account of what I had seen under the microscope.

At the end of the first year, we were examined in general human anatomy. I entered the room where my viva was being held and sat down with the two examiners. One of them, an external examiner, said to me: Do you remember me?” I looked at him blankly before he said: “I used to meet you walking on Hampstead Heath with your parents. Please give them my regards.” At that moment, I knew that I had passed the examination.

The final year examinations, which determined whether you would or would not be awarded a degree in dental surgery were quite harrowing. Most people considered that the viva conducted by the dean of our dental school and a dean visiting from another dental school was the most frightening part of the finals. And, when I took the finals, we learnt that the visiting dean, the external examiner, had a fearsome reputation. So, I was somewhat nervous when I entered the room to face the deans. After answering a couple of questions evidently satisfactorily, the dean of our dental school said: “Well, of course we’re looking forward to you joining our staff when you qualify…” At that moment, I realised that I must have qualified.  I said that during the five-year dental course, I had discovered that I enjoyed treating patients, and that I would enter practice rather than academia.

One of the many things that appealed to me about practising dentistry is the constant contact with a huge variety of people. This is not the case in academic research. It can be a lonely business. The other appeal of practising dentistry is that often, but not always, a problem can be identified and solved. Someone loses a filling. The dentist replaces it: problem solved. In academic research, as each question begins to be solved, many others present themselves: it is never-ending.