n 2019 I was fitter than at any other point in my life – and I had a life I loved. It was my third year at the BBC. Every day at New Broadcasting House, I knew that I was seeing world events from a rare vantage point. I loved being surrounded by all the TV monitors and feeling at the centre of things. It had its trials, like any job, but it never stopped feeling like a privilege.
The day after my mother died I went to a different dentist. This was the last thing I wanted to be doing. But it was three months since the intermittent tooth pain and I was worried by the further effects I could feel and see. Another “non-definitive” X-ray ensued. Now desperate, I said I didn’t care about the X-ray. I had developed a horribly specific rotting taste. I knew the tooth was necrotic – in other words, dying. I could feel it leaching into the surrounding area and beyond.
Having to start again meant this new dentist did not have direct experience of the progress and impact of the infection. Now, in stark contrast to the previous November, I looked as if I had never been particularly healthy. A 3D scan showed the original tooth to be necrotic, as I had said five months before. Evidence of the infection was clear in the surrounding bone. By the time it is seen in the bone, dental infection is advanced.
I have learned that there is widespread recognition that X-rays do not always capture dental issues. In my case this was disastrous, but should not have been left to become so. The idea that a patient’s worsening dental pain in one tooth, then several, followed by a rotting taste, does not justify physically looking inside the original tooth is dangerously wrong. All characterise dental infection.
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