I’ve had a few of them, mainly self inflicted, as I was away most of the time, I never had a regular dentist, they were few and far between and if you didn’t go every 6months for a check they slung you off their register.
So I used to go to Guys or King’s College and let the students practice, I obviously only went at the start of term as I kept getting abcesses and had one on a front tooth that swelled my face so much I couldn’t open my eyes!
I was parked opposite a Pompiers just south of Chambery on the N6, on my way to Telford from Mira (VE) and the swelling had, as I said, got pretty bad, the pain was excruciating, so I went over to the Pompiers, hoping for a paramedic, I got Monsieur McGyver who heated a needle and stabbed me in the gum. OMG the taste was putrid, he grabbed my bugle and squeezed all the pus out and that was that, I dropped him FF100 and set off up the road, pain free at last.
A big hit and I was parked outside Peuduce (sp) Nappies at Telford and my face was swelling again, I spent the night in a converted coach cafe as sleep was not an option. After unloading I got one of the girls in the office to take me to a dentist in town where I got a course of antibiotics and a filling in the problem tooth.
From then on I seemed to get an abcess every couple of months for a few years.
It was only when I got signed on at a proper dentist that I got it sorted and it cost me thousands as I couldn’t get on with an NHS dentist. He told me that the first one caused all the rest as it was never dealt with properly.