I learned the hard way that a baguette “bien cuite” can be dangerous, and that asking for une baguette “pas trop cuite” can save lives.

I broke my tooth on a baguette. In my defense it was quite a hard bit, but the real cause was a crown not done before moving to France and my procrastination upon arrival. I was also newly pregnant at the time, so I figured that I would have to wait to do any treatments since you can’t take much medication during pregnancy, and they were clearly going to have to inject me will all sorts of French anaesthetics. The truth is that I’M TERRIFIED OF THE DENTIST, and of all the practitioners that I needed to find at that point –  midwife, GP, a maternity hospital – the list was long and the dentist was in last place.

After far too long, I decided that toothless Tracy would be no more, and I made an appointment with someone my husband had seen months earlier and whose work was of good quality. Our first meeting went well – he seemed nice, and told me I would need something called an “inlay core”, explaining that it would happen through a simple series of appointments, molds and “hop!”, I would be as good as new.

I was pleased because it didn’t sound as bad or involved as I imagined, and I got my “devis” (quote) and went on my merry way. I was also glad that it would be basically free with my insurance.

The day of the first appointment, I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. My husband and I had an argument about something silly – you know, the kind of thing you fight over when you haven’t slept for 18 months – and I was running late for similar sleep-deprived reasons. Somewhere along the way, I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to get my tooth fixed, and I got in an uber and made it with 10 minutes to spare. This time, however, the scene was dramatically different.

I entered the building and walked from the front entrance to a back exit, into a courtyard. The Hitchcockian birds stared at me as I walked down a long winding pathway to a second building, where I rang up. The secretary answered and I announced myself, “Madame Claveirole”. She opened the door, giving me a second secret code for the elevator. I entered the building and turned left into a corridor, found the tiny elevator, punched in the numbers and it took off, stopping at the second floor. “How did it know where I was going?” I thought, getting out onto the floor of what looked like a regular apartment building. I noticed a door to my right that was ajar in a sinister sort of way. I figured this was the office, and went in.

There was nobody at the front desk so I wandered around a bit to find the so-skinny receptionist in the waiting room chatting with another patient. They both smiled and said “bonjour!”, and I noticed that the woman had a full smile of brown teeth. I sat down and waited. I waited – and waited – admiring the graffiti on the wall outside the window. “Ras le bol!” (sick of it) was tattooed on the cement wall behind the office, and 24 minutes after what was to be the start of my appointment, the dentist presented himself.

He was a short man, the same short man I had met about a month earlier, yet somehow his appearance was less inviting. I noticed a slight hunch in his back and an unhealthy yellow-gray undertone to his skin. He smiled at me – a very brown smile – and I cringed thinking that he might not be living the good dental hygiene that his profession preaches.

We walked into the treatment room, down yet another long corridor, and the smell of stale cigarettes filled the hallway, becoming more and more intense as we moved along – as did my nausea. Once seated, he explained how things were going to work today, and showed me the drill while speaking casually about something or another. He said it wouldn’t hurt because the difficult part was already over and my tooth was “déjà dévitalisée”, or dead, but I was having a hard time focussing on anything but the drill he was waving about in front of my face. The tiny ball on the end of the tiny metal shaft was threatening to create unsavoury vibrations in my head and I started to panic. I told him I was afraid and that it might help if he explained the procedure further. Not true. By this point, I was in full on panic attack, face covered in tears and told him I could not continue. He said, “Il faut me faire confiance”. “Oui…”, I replied as I rounded up my personal belongings and in a mix of fear and shame, ran out of the office.

I was relieved to be outside and will never look back. This experience reminded me of an important lesson I learned since moving here – that is, that I have a responsibility to myself to ensure comfort since most other things are quite foreign, especially when it comes to personal and health care. I made an appointment with someone else, in a shiny new office building, who speaks heavily accented English and is much more expensive. This time, I’ll start with a cleaning to see how it goes.