In the Podiatrist's Dental Chair

 

Image: Ideogram.ai

 For more than a decade I paid Doctor Carey to work on my teeth whenever one or more of them caused me pain in the form of toothache. He was a soft spoken, reserved man of slight build who was moderately competent without showing enthusiasm or flair. He was also of sober habits, for which I was thankful, two of my previous dentists having been drunkards. The one was an ex-Royal Navy immigrant who refused to mess about with the drill after lunch, which he washed down with whisky, and preferred to do a quick extraction, whether it was necessary or not. I lost a perfectly salvageable molar one afternoon back in the sixties when I was a schoolboy too timid to offer any resistance. The other dronkie suffered from anxiety. To steady his shaking hands, he medicated himself with tots of neat gin prn. I stopped going to him shortly before the Health Professions Council of South Africa declared him a danger to the public and withdrew his licence.

When I moved back to Pearly Beach I had to find a dentist in Gansbaai to replace Doctor Carey. Dr Koos van der Merwe has the strong meaty hands of a platteland farmer and does what he can with my dwindling stock of toothy pegs. I get the impression he thinks I won’t be needing teeth for all that much longer.

Now for the podiatrist. Up until about the age of 60 my preferred footwear was the open sandal, which kept the feet well ventilated. Unfortunately, the dusty gravel roads began to take their toll, and I developed cracked heels and calloused toes, and the nails became thick and twisted and as hard as those of a dog. I consulted an old-school dermatologist who frequented the dorp on occasion, and he said the only effective remedy for cracked heels was a mixture of 50/50 milking cream and shaving cream. The milking cream, which could be obtained from the farmers’ co-op in Stanford, contained lanolin, and was originally used by milking maids when tugging at a cow’s udder, and was good for both hands and teats. I tried it for several weeks and found it almost entirely useless. That was when I decided to consult a podiatrist.

There being nobody local, I had to look further afield. Mike Sheldon came to Hermanus from Somerset West twice a week. In the morning, he attended to clients in the old age establishments and saw other patients in the afternoon. To my surprise, it turned out that he worked from rooms that had once been Doctor Carey’s surgery, the dentist having vacated them when he retired some years back.

Mr Sheldon had an off-hand manner, as if he didn’t particularly like the look of me. This triggered a reciprocal response, and I took note of some of his negative qualities, like his middle-age spread that verged on obesity, and his abrupt and humourless manner. On entering his consulting room, I immediately recognised Dr Carey’s brown dental chair standing in the centre of an otherwise unfurnished space. He told me to remove my shoes and socks and recline in the chair, which he then tipped forward. Seated on a low stool next to his instrument table, he examined my feet,an expression of disdain on his face.

“Do they look bad?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen feet this badly neglected since I had to treat a homeless man in the provincial hospital.”

He then got to work on my toenails with heavy duty clippers and shears, and managed to trim them right back, the way one would drastically prune a vine at the end of the grape season. Then, using a variety of tools that included a mini sanding machine he set to work on the callouses and cracked skin.

While he was busy, I attempted to engage him in conversation.

“What is the difference between a chiropodist and a podiatrist?”

“Podiatrist is the modern term. Only old people living in the past talk about a chiropodist now. Lift your foot so I can get at the heel.”

“You know,” I said after a while, “I have sat in this chair on many previous occasions, and it has a familiar feel. That was when Dr Carey, the dentist, worked on my decaying teeth.”

He made no comment, so I lay back and thought about what I had just said. I began to chuckle.

“Don’t you think it’s a weird coincidence, Mike? You don’t mind me calling you Mike? Just call me Ian. That’s my bloody name after all, ha, ha. I mean, just think about it. Here I am, relaxing in this chair, having been worked on at one end by a dentist, and now having a podiatrist attending to the other end. It makes me feel kind of regal.”

“Are you going to be paying cash?” He was packing up his tools and instruments, which meant he was done. “I am charging 650 and not 550, because your feet have taken far longer than a normal treatment usually does. My lady will write you a receipt.” He then left the room without any attempt at formal courtesies, and I put my socks and shoes back on before hobbling to reception.

I sometimes recall this episode while moisturising my feet after a bath. The image of that resentful minion grovelling before his lordship never fails to amuse me. Probably because of its persistence and entertainment value, it has become a cherished memory well worth recording and sharing it with the thousands of people who read this blog and appreciate absurdity and irony.