FOR many, a trip to the dentist is a dreaded affair and people will often put up with excruciating toothache before making an appointment. Yet former patients mingled with ex-colleagues at retired dentist Vicky Lee’s recent 70th birthday party (wearing red below).
She proudly wears a hand-made badge reading “keep ’em clean”, created by Hannah Hill, the third generation of a family that Vicky treated for more than 40 years at her Regent’s Park Road surgery.
She retired from the Primrose Dental Practice earlier this year but former patients still keep in touch. “People sit in planes and trains and find I am the person that links them,” she said. “I’m often the common person.”
Vicky joined the wave of dentists in the early 1980s that challenged long-held practices and looked instead at a holistic approach to dentistry, or what has been termed “mentistry”.
“I started investigations when I myself was affected by mercury in 1983 at the birth of my daughter,” she said. “I’ve always been interested in mind and emotions in relation to dentistry.
“Teeth have a very deep meaning. In the story of Peter Pan the description of him is he hasn’t lost his baby teeth. He hasn’t grown up. The loss of teeth, both as a child and an adult, can have very deep implications in the psyche.”
Holistic dentistry seeks alternatives to conventional treatments, including surgical interventions, root canals, the use of amalgam and mercury in fillings and fluoride in toothpaste. Vicky was open to exploring the possibility that everyday dental materials could affect the patient’s health, and offered individual sensitivity tests and used traditional Bach Flower Remedies.
“I was very interested in the wider field than the teeth – the transpersonal psychology of people,” she said. “It wasn’t just somebody having a tooth problem – the crisis could be related to what was happening in their life. I worked with the patients to make sure they felt better leaving the surgery than when they arrived.”
Vicky’s interest in the mind spills into her work as an actor. She performs with Spare Tyre theatre company, a group that works with people aged over 60, those with advanced dementia and adults with learning disabilities. She previously played a “wriggling inflammation in a blister” at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate and appeared in Still Life Dreaming at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011, a drama based on the epic academic study into cognitive function where Scottish children born in 1936 were tested aged 11 and again at age 70.
Vicky plans to continue working with Spare Tyre into her retirement.
