By Dr. Robert Kelly, D.M.D., The Mountain Times
So every now and then I encounter a brave and unique soul who requests that I do a major dental procedure like a filling or crown with no anesthesia. After about 10 “Are you sures?” I reluctantly begin, holding my breath for maybe the first 30 seconds to see if they change their mind. You know with all of these encounters, even after repeated “have you changed your mind?” questions throughout the procedure, not one of these patients has ever said “ok, numb me up after alI.” If you can believe it, none of them regret their decision! For us mere mortals though, if something is going to hurt, and we can make it not hurt, I am reaching for the medicine to make it pain free.
On rare occasions though you may be faced with a dental dilemma. One such dilemma is illustrated by a funny story I encountered recently about toothaches, emergency dentist appointments, The Lord of the Rings movies, and Hobbit feet. And yes, all four of these things are part of the same story.
At a recent convention in Salt Lake City, three of the original Lord of the Rings’ Hobbits, with Gimli, got together on stage to talk about their time making the famous movie trilogy. The most entertaining story was told by Billy Boyd, who played the Hobbit Pippin.
The cinematography, special effects, and costumes for these movies was really groundbreaking, especially for that time. The Hobbit feet in fact were so elaborate – gluing the costume on and painting and adding hair to them – that it took an hour just to do those feet every day they filmed.
One day in the middle of filming, Billy Boyd was waiting in his trailer to go on set and he got a horrible toothache. Always terrible timing, isn’t it? So Boyd had to immediately go see a dentist. And because nobody knew about these movies yet and they had to keep filming a secret, they had to drape Boyd in a robe and attach giant boot coverings over his hobbit feet.
He shows up at the dental office and the dentist confirms he needs a filling. As she gets ready to numb Boyd up, he stops her and asks her if he can do it without the numbing. Not that he wants to do it that way, but he is afraid that the numbness will prevent him from saying his lines for the next few hours and he wants to be ready to get back on set right away. I believe this dentist had the same reaction as me and she reluctantly got to work getting Boyd fixed up.
Boyd said that the dentist was nice and kept checking in on him but that he wanted to power through the procedure to avoid delaying production of the movie. Ironically though, Boyd said he started sweating so much in the chair that his feet fell off in the procedure! To which Elijah Wood, Hobbit Frodo, laughed and joked “she drilled your feet off!”
In the end Boyd had to walk out of the office with his feet in his hands and go again through the whole process of putting the Hobbit feet back on. Which of course, by that time, any numbing he would have had would have been wearing off. Facepalm.
At least he had a good laugh about the whole ordeal, remarking that Aragorn actor Viggo Mortensen’s chipped tooth repair during filming was nothing compared to his experience! As Gandalf always believed, Hobbits can surprise you with how tough they are!