Friday, August 1, 2008

Kya aap BDS pass se tez hai?





I would certify you so, if you have already identified the object in the photograph. It did take me a few minutes to get its true identity, even though I was the one who had made the object.
It is a set of few artificial teeth. What we call as a removable partial denture. I made it some years back and one of the teeth broke when its master thought that he had mastered its use and bit a chicken bone with overconfidence. He was to leave for his job abroad, the next day, and so I had an emergency call. I assured him that there is no need to panic, replaced the tooth then and there in front of him, and bid him bon voyage. At that time, that denture consisted of three teeth.

He came on a vacation after two years, requested me to make a new set for him and showed me this set with which he had been managing for the past two years. Now, it consisted of seven teeth and four of them were natural teeth! In my experience of twenty years, all I had heard and seen about, was one set of milk teeth, the next set of permanent teeth and the third type – the set of artificial teeth which we prepare- if one is careless enough to loose the god given free sets. This combination of plastic and natural teeth was new to me. That’s why it took time for me to believe and identify what I was seeing.
This gentleman had collected and saved his remaining natural teeth as and when they fell out, and having seen the way I repaired his denture, had cut them to size using I don’t know what, and had stuck them at the appropriate places in the denture using god knows which adhesive. I should have got the name of the adhesive from him. It would have been useful. This was ingenious. I had not seen anybody doing it before-nor have seen afterwards. I would not have hesitated to recommend him to head the department of prosthetic dentistry in any dental college.

I do come across some such cases once in a way. But the above one was a class of his own. There was one who said that having got fed up with his fillings repeatedly falling off, he stuffed the cavity in his tooth with a mixture of flour and quickfix and that it remained for two years. There was one who shaped a mass of chewed up bubblegum and stuck it on to the broken stump of his front tooth when the cap that had been fitted broke. He had managed with bubblegum for a week before he saw me.
There was another who had come to have his shaking tooth pulled out. I gave him the numbing injection and asked him to wait for a few minutes outside. He had told me that he had attempted to pull out the tooth himself but it hurt. I should have been alert. Now that there was no more pain, he pulled it out himself in my waiting room and walked off, saving himself my fees.

Thank god that their number is small. Or else by now I should have joined the birds and beasts around me and got the label ENDANGERED.

3 comments:

A. Knight said...

this is the most INDIgenious piece of prostho ever.... u should consider publishing it... with the name of the adhesive of course :))

Akshay said...

excellent blog... u r outdoing urself each tym.....

Sushma U N said...

I agree with Dumbo