Back in my 20s a bad bounce from a very hard softball knocked out my top front teeth. A good friend of mine was a very good dentist. He put in a bridge that lasted almost 30 years. That is too long for a bridge I was told. But I couldn’t imagine how horrible it was going to be if a dentist was yanking on my bridge trying to pull it out. Plus, after all that time it was probably going to smell like opening a crypt.

I nutted up a few years back and had surgery to replace that old bridge with a full set of implants. That was about 6 years ago.

In September of 2023, we were staying at a house just outside of Avignon.

One evening I was taking a bite out of a baguette. I heard and felt something really weird in my mouth. “No way” I thought. It couldn’t be. Had I just chipped my teeth? Yes, I had. Shit. What the hell was I going to do?

I called out to D “I just broke my implant!”

“What?” She said as she came into the kitchen. “How did you do that”

“On a baguette. I’m screwed. Where and how am I going to find a dentist? How much is this going to cost?”

From the look on her face, my new smile was not too pretty. It was the tooth on the top row that was smack dab in the middle of your smile.

I spent the next morning on the internet searching for a dentist. First, I had to figure out what the French called a dentist that worked on implants. After 2 or 3 frustrating hours, I found one about an hour away in Montpelier. To not walk around with a chipped front tooth, I would have driven to Hungary.  

For the next week, until the appointment, I was going to have to talk with my hand in front of my mouth whenever I was in public. Yes, I know I am vain. But I lived in California, what do you want from me?

When I got to the dentist office, they actually had receptionists and assistants at the front counter. Not that it did me any good. None of them spoke English. I had been practicing on the way to town. So, I did my best to say “je mapelle Paul, J’ai un rendezvous avec (doctor’s name).” They pointed to a bank of chairs for me to be seated. Less than a minute later, what appeared to be a 12-year-old in a white lab coat came out of an office calling my name. He looked fresh out of dental school. But he spoke English, that was good enough for me.

I asked him if he knew the technology of the manufacturer of my teeth. He said “no, but I think I fix”. I was like “ok, if this goes well, can I schedule to come back for a cleaning?”. He said “I do that when I am done”. Hmm, seems like the dentists do the cleanings here, no hygienist. Crazy.

He finished up quickly. The new tooth looked great and he cleaned my teeth, all in 30 minutes. They don’t clean teeth here like in the US.

On the way home I was so relieved. The appointment was cheap and the rebuilt tooth looked good. 

Three days later the repair job fell apart like the Mets after May. I set up another appointment with Doogie the Dentist. He then emailed me telling me that he was cancelling the new appointment because he can’t help me. Things sure are different here.