Whilst brushing my teeth this morning I thought about my mum, I think about her a lot but for some reason my dental routine took me back to when my mum had been in our local nursing home for about three weeks. She told me that her teeth had not been brushed for a long time. I'd reached the stage where I took most of what she said with a liberal portion of savoury seasoning, but, sometimes I thought she still functioned like most of us and that was one of those times. I assured her that I would sort it, so I felt her toothbrush and it was rock hard and dry as a bone which led me to conclude that she was indeed correct about the lack of dental hygiene. I had a pleasant word with the nurse on duty who promised me that all would be rectified and she was most apologetic. I’d left my glasses in mum's room and when I realised this I came straight back to collect them and found a HUGE note on her bathroom mirror which indicated that ‘was very attached to her teeth, anyone found not brushing them at least twice a day would have a Fatwa issued against them’ or words to that effect. Wow! The smell of toothpaste as I entered her room was overwhelming so no one’s life was in danger that night. Next morning I popped in as usual and, without exception, every member of staff I met said how sorry they were for not brushing her teeth. It seems that somewhere it had been written that she had dentures and subsequently when the staff saw her with teeth they all assumed that someone else had cleaned her dentures and ‘popped’ them back in. By now it was getting rather tedious being told, yet again, sorry, blah, blah, blah, dentures etc. The manager apologised and the senior nurse was furious and told me that she had threatened anyone found not complying would be for the high jump. When I went in that afternoon I hoped that the teeth incident had bitten the dust, so to speak, so I was sorely disappointed when Joseph asked if he could speak to me. It seemed that her gums were now bleeding. Well, surprise, surprise, every person in the building must have brushed her teeth at least TWICE that morning! Her poor mouth must have been scrubbed raw! When I saw her, she smiled at me and I have to say that she bore more than a passing resemblance to Dracula due to her now profusely bleeding gums.
A couple of days after the teeth scrubbing incident hubs asked me to look out of her bedroom window. She was incarcerated on the ground floor and there, nestling in the grass, was a full set of dentures, on their own, just smiling at the world at large. They could have come straight from an X Factor judge’s mouth. I knew they did not belong to my mother so, the question was, who did they belong to? I’d become almost immune to the strange goings on at this place but I must admit this was a new one, even the staff were baffled. What is really amazing is that weeks later the owner of the missing smile had still not been traced. How could you not notice that the contents of someone’s mouth had gone A.W.O.L? Teeth cannot just go walkabout, I don’t think they can even go talk about. Here today, gone tomorrow, a mouthful of dazzling white porcelain one moment and a pink gummy grin the next. Where has the attention to detail gone? Same place as the teeth I expect.
I was retelling all this to a friend whose mum was in a nursing home due to Alzheimer’s, her mum had a hearing aid as well as full set of dentures. Without modern ingenuity she would have been deaf as well as mute. She was visiting one day when it was obvious that the batteries in her mum’s hearing aid had died as she was unable to hear anything. She asked her mum to give her the hearing aid so she could replace the batteries for her and held out her hand, whereupon her mum removed her dentures and plonked them in her palm, presumably to have the batteries changed! Mmmm, I suppose it’s quite easy to get your ears and your mouth mixed up, they are close to each other and in some people they are very close to each other. I’ve confused worse than that in my time. I once confused an absolute b*****d for a really nice person. Actually, I did that more than once. Anyway, she was telling us all this whilst we were at the pub and I’m afraid we rather let the idea of battery operated teeth go to our heads. I know you can get those joke ones with feet that walk about but this was no joke, oh no, this was a serious scientific/medical discussion. There was much speculation about what size batteries you could fit into your mouth. The men thought the women would need HUGE power packs with back up facilities but they were convinced that they could get by with tiny embedded silicone chips. Hubs came up with the brilliant idea of having a remote control so you could vary the speed, chatter ten to the dozen or just slowly drawl away if you were a little bit tired. We thought they could be advertised using a play on the B.T. Yellow pages advert, instead of ‘Let your fingers do the walking’ it could be ‘Let your dentures do the talking!’ In the middle of all this daft talk someone else related the tale of visiting their grandfather in a home many years ago. All the family were happily drinking tea and eating cakes and biscuits when someone put a plate in front of granddad. On it was one of those sort of sponge cup cake things, with icing and a cherry on the top, he had dentures so biscuits were banned. Granddad quickly picked up the cake, bit off the cherry, spat it out and then lobbed the cake, over arm, as hard as he could. It seems he was shell shocked in the war and thought someone had given him a hand grenade! Luckily there were no fatalities that time, but cakes can be so dangerous!
There were lots of sore heads the next morning. Alcohol has a lot to answer for! Of now to the pub, see you all later,
Ballerina x
A couple of days after the teeth scrubbing incident hubs asked me to look out of her bedroom window. She was incarcerated on the ground floor and there, nestling in the grass, was a full set of dentures, on their own, just smiling at the world at large. They could have come straight from an X Factor judge’s mouth. I knew they did not belong to my mother so, the question was, who did they belong to? I’d become almost immune to the strange goings on at this place but I must admit this was a new one, even the staff were baffled. What is really amazing is that weeks later the owner of the missing smile had still not been traced. How could you not notice that the contents of someone’s mouth had gone A.W.O.L? Teeth cannot just go walkabout, I don’t think they can even go talk about. Here today, gone tomorrow, a mouthful of dazzling white porcelain one moment and a pink gummy grin the next. Where has the attention to detail gone? Same place as the teeth I expect.
I was retelling all this to a friend whose mum was in a nursing home due to Alzheimer’s, her mum had a hearing aid as well as full set of dentures. Without modern ingenuity she would have been deaf as well as mute. She was visiting one day when it was obvious that the batteries in her mum’s hearing aid had died as she was unable to hear anything. She asked her mum to give her the hearing aid so she could replace the batteries for her and held out her hand, whereupon her mum removed her dentures and plonked them in her palm, presumably to have the batteries changed! Mmmm, I suppose it’s quite easy to get your ears and your mouth mixed up, they are close to each other and in some people they are very close to each other. I’ve confused worse than that in my time. I once confused an absolute b*****d for a really nice person. Actually, I did that more than once. Anyway, she was telling us all this whilst we were at the pub and I’m afraid we rather let the idea of battery operated teeth go to our heads. I know you can get those joke ones with feet that walk about but this was no joke, oh no, this was a serious scientific/medical discussion. There was much speculation about what size batteries you could fit into your mouth. The men thought the women would need HUGE power packs with back up facilities but they were convinced that they could get by with tiny embedded silicone chips. Hubs came up with the brilliant idea of having a remote control so you could vary the speed, chatter ten to the dozen or just slowly drawl away if you were a little bit tired. We thought they could be advertised using a play on the B.T. Yellow pages advert, instead of ‘Let your fingers do the walking’ it could be ‘Let your dentures do the talking!’ In the middle of all this daft talk someone else related the tale of visiting their grandfather in a home many years ago. All the family were happily drinking tea and eating cakes and biscuits when someone put a plate in front of granddad. On it was one of those sort of sponge cup cake things, with icing and a cherry on the top, he had dentures so biscuits were banned. Granddad quickly picked up the cake, bit off the cherry, spat it out and then lobbed the cake, over arm, as hard as he could. It seems he was shell shocked in the war and thought someone had given him a hand grenade! Luckily there were no fatalities that time, but cakes can be so dangerous!
There were lots of sore heads the next morning. Alcohol has a lot to answer for! Of now to the pub, see you all later,
Ballerina x
x
he was sacked for rolling it twice going too fast around bends. 
my grandad was my hero.
)
eek @rawkaren so glad you have your grandpa there with you driving
