-It’s going to be very, very, very expensive!!

One Friday evening I was waiting at Paddington station and had just got a text telling me I would have to wait for another hour. I was not in a good mood.

I went to buy something to eat and decided to get a mushroom pastry. The white, soft, spongy thing wrapped around in soft pastry.

I sat down under the big train departure sign and eat my mushroom pastry. And then I felt I chew on something hard, like a stone, and my filling fell out. F_ck!

I went to a dentist the next morning to have it fixed. In the evening the (new) filling had fallen out again. Great! A dentist job NOT well done.

Two days later I went to another dentist. It was a horrible place. The brick building looked like it was falling apart; the floor was covered by dark brown dirty carpets. It smelled, it was dark and nothing at all like the crisp white dentist surgeries I was used to in Sweden.

I was lying in the dentist chair with all sorts of things in my month when the dentist asked me if I wanted to have a black or white filling.

I was totally taken by surprise by the question. I was quiet for a few seconds, not sure if I had understood the question, it was one I never gotten before.

-White, I said with a very confused face. I thought since my teeth were white I suppose I wanted the filling to have the same colour. Wouldn’t everyone? Or was it a trick question?

The dentist looked at me with a very strict face:
-It’s going to be very, very, very expensive!

Since I’m Swedish and going to the dentist in Sweden is very expensive, it’s what I’m used to and would expect. I thought maybe the reason why Brits have horrible dental hygiene is because it is too expensive, even more expensive then in Sweden. So I looked at my dentist and said:

-Black… And it seemed to be the answer he was after.

I honestly didn’t think he was going to put amalgam in my mouth, but of course he did. I didn’t realise until years later that the black dots on my teeth were amalgam.

In Sweden amalgam has been banned for years as we now know it’s very bad for you to walk around with radioactivity in your mouth. It sort of explains itself. Swedes have their amalgam taken out and replaced.

I left the dentist chair worried that my life savings would soon be gone, but the cost for my dentist treatment was: £10. TEN POUNDS! In Sweden to have a filling done you would have to pay ten times that amount. Just to sit in the dentist chair would cost you more then £10.

Last week I went to my dentist for the first time since I’ve been back in Sweden, for a check up. She was not happy at all.

I had to have three appointments where she started by taken out the amalgam and replaced with white fillings. Since our teeth after all are white and not black.

She had to redo a few fillings I had done in England since they where just done on the surface, leaving the caries to continue damaging my teeth underneath the cover up, which of course had made everything much worse.

And I’m telling you this time it was very, very, very expensive, it cost bloody £800. EIGHT HUNDRED POUNDS!

England owes me £800. Can you please send a check payable to Miss L Sundqvist?