WHERE DO DENTISTS GO FOR THEIR HOLIDAYS?

They decamp to distant sunny places - as far away as they can to escape the annual festive eruption of teeth, writes Lin Sampson

THEY go south in the summer, to get as far away from patients as they can. I have this tooth, a warrior, the granddaddy of the mouth, unstable, a spitting cobra of a molar, grumpy and manipulative, sometimes maintaining an "I'm all right" silence and then suddenly erupting in personality-disordered rage, usually around Christmas.

It is December 21. I am standing outside my dentist's rooms. "They've gone," says a girl in an adjacent office. She adds with some satisfaction. "And won't be back until the middle of 2012."

If dentists had any sort of meaningful relationship with teeth, if they'd ever dated a tooth, they'd know that all teeth have diaries with the Christmas hols ringed in neon pen. This is the time they like to get uppity and go for a jol.

This tooth has been seen by three specialists in the last months. Why didn't anyone whip it out? I'll tell you why. Dentists are too smart to pull teeth. They no longer call themselves dentists but endodontists, oral and facial surgeons, orthodontists, periodontists, prosthodontists ...

We all know they were the guys who failed to get into medical school but boy are they making up for it with CT scanners and whizz-bang implements. Their practices have names like the Smile Lounge.

They have in-chair entertainment and are involved in such aesthetic manoeuvres as gum lifts, veneers as thin as a contact lens, porcelain inlays and tooth-coloured fillings.

When I asked my dentist if he could take the tooth out, he said, "No, you'll need a dentist for that."

"I thought you were a dentist?"

"No, I am a periodontist."

His last words were: "If you've got dry socket, don't worry to come back because there is nothing we can do."

Sadly, the skill of dentists does not depend on high-tech equipment and smart names. When I lived on a Greek island, I had a dentist who worked his drill with a foot pedal. He knew teeth in that intimate, experienced way that a lover knows his long-time mistress.

I ring 10 dentists.

"Sorry doctor is away until the 14th. Doctor will be back on the 12th of January. Doctor is in Europe until the 16th." The one dentist I do manage to contact says: "I'd love to help but I am 250km out of town."

A lot of dentists spend Christmas in Australia, the motherland of all dentists.

When I do find a dentist who actually calls himself a dentist, he says: "We dentists have a phrase, don't let the sun go down on pus," and pulls the old vagabond, who pays me back with dry socket.

As I lie in the forked lightning of potent pain, far away on Bondi Beach, a cellphone rings into the blonde surrounds, a cry for help folds into 2m peaks and floats like smoke around the tanned legs of dental hygienists.

I write an ode to dry socket, said to be one of the most painful conditions on Earth.

That strange vacuum

Where my tooth had been

A hole as dark as destiny,

A light load away from

The awesome strike

Of ominous tombs

In bright white