Years ago, a very connected friend arranged for me to get upgraded on a British Airways work flight to New York, from economy, to First. Oh, it blew my tiny, cattle-class accustomed mind! I was genuflucted through the special VIP-designated security procedures by gentle souls who couldn’t have been more embarrassed about this terrible intrusion upon my time, I was given all the free cheese I could eat in the lounge, and tucked into my on-board flat bed with the tenderness of a lover. I slept all the way, a deep, untroubled sleep; then kicked myself on arrival for having wasted seven hours of unabridged luxury by being unconscious.
‘What an incredible thing to do for me!’ I said to my v connected friend. ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘because now you’ll know what you’re missing every time you fly Economy.’ He was right. I can no longer board a flight and turn right without feeling a pang of bitterness for all I now know for a fact I am being denied.
I am reminded of this when a press invite lands me in the dental chair of Dr Annie, a private dentist who operates from the American Smile clinic in Chelsea, West London, an operation that is very much the dental equivalent of a first class flight to New York. Oh, it is fancy! Light and white and breezy, with leather sofas and a fridge full of complimentary water: still and sparkling! Dr Annie, meanwhile, reminds me of Matilda’s Miss Honey, so pretty and patient and sweet; which makes my usual NHS dentist the Miss Trunchball of our situation. This isn’t entirely fair, he’s a pleasant and competent sixty something gentleman who’s never once referred to me as a ‘squirming worm of vomit’, not yet, anyway… But you get my point.
I watch two eps of the new series of The Crown, feel occasional faint twinges of cold, but nothing else; after two and a half hours, she’s done.
Dr Annie and I start with a check-up and a clean, which is an extraordinary experience for two reasons: one, I get to watch Friends throughout – it’s streamed onto a TV screen mounted into the ceiling above my head – and two, it doesn’t hurt. Not for a moment. Not for a twinge. My teeth are in alright nick – I’m a tad highly strung about their maintenance, never miss a six-monthly check-up, just to keep them ticking over, haven’t needed a filing in decades – but still. I’ve never left my usual check-up and clean feeling anything less than vaguely violated, spitting a little blood and necking Nurofen till everything ‘settles’; I’d assumed it was just the way of things, but now?
‘I feel like you just gently brushed over my teeth with feathers and now they’re gleaming and clean,’ I tell Dr Annie, who promptly invites me and some of the other children to come and live with her in her country cottage… No, no, sorry. I mean: she invites me back, to get my teeth tweaked.
It’s a double-pronged process. Part one involves overall whitening, two and a bit hours of my lolling back on her couch, while she beams a laser onto my teeth, which she’s previously coated in whitening activator, and I watch Suits. This is fine. Awkward and lengthy and rather odd – when is someone fiddling around extensively in your mouth not odd? Also: Dr A pins my lips apart and back with a rubber gum shield contraption that takes a few minutes to get used to… But it is totally painless. Once we’re done, she sends me off with incredibly white teeth, some molds she took when first I arrived, and some special bleach, and instructions to top up her work with some at home overnight bleaching endeavours of my own.
I return, several weeks later, to have four of my front upper nashers composite bonded into a whole other level of perfection. Composite bonding is a minimally intrusive form of veneer, where a resin is applied directly to the enamel, shaped by the dentist, then hardened with ultraviolet light. ‘We won’t need anaesthetic,’ says Dr Annie, which makes me fall slightly more in love with her than I already was.
This time, she prepares my teeth by hiding all except those on which she’s working behind a small blue rubber curtain, an utterly weird sensation I fully embrace when I realize it means, for some reason, you stop generating the oceans of saliva you normally spend quality dentist time panic swallowing while hoping no one’s noticed you’re drowning in your own gob.
And oh! Dr Annie works like an artist! Contemplating my teeth through special magnifying goggles with a mini flashlight attached, leaning in when inspiration hits for a flurry of activity, then backing off to consider her next step. I watch two eps of the new series of The Crown, feel occasional faint twinges of cold, but nothing else; after two and a half hours, she’s done. And, oh! How expensive my teeth look! There’s a lofty gloss to them, a confident swagger! Who knew teeth could swagger? Yet: mine can! It’s like I’ve finally got my hands (mouth) on the designer original of what had been the high street knock offs of my own teeth!
I adore them. And hell, the give great selfie!
Price List
A check up costs £95
Zoom! Whitening costs from £795
Composite veneers cost from £345 per tooth
Would I pay for it myself?
If I could afford to, yes. I can’t, is the truth of the matter, but is it worth the money? Yes! So I’d do it, in the same way I’d fly first class, if I could afford to. It is a gloriously spoiled and spoiling experience which bares almost no resemblance to the NHS alternative, and it really does make me wish I were rich. They have a nicer time of it than us, the rich. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.
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