A WOMAN was forced to pull out her own tooth – before gluing in a fake one that she bought for £2 from Wish.
Helen Sheen, from Scarborough, North Yorkshire, said she could not find another dentist nearby that would take her on when hers closed two years ago, reports YorkshireLive.
Ms Sheen, 61, suffers from gum disease and said one of her teeth started to come loose, forcing her to take matters into her own hands.
She said: "I have bleeding gums every time I clean my teeth and it’s making me not want to clean them as I hate the taste of blood and all my teeth are getting wobbly.
"One in front was so wobbly it had to come out as I couldn’t eat with it so I put Elastoplast on the end of the pliers and tugged it out."
Ms Sheen said this left her with a big gap in her bottom row which she tended to with glue and a fake tooth she bought from online retailer Wish.
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Ms Sheen said: "The only thing I could think of was melting glue and moulding it into the gap. It’s been two years now.
"It’s working okay, I can actually smile without seeing a gap."
Ms Sheen's case is one of thousands which highlight the current lack of NHS dentists across the country.
The British Dental Association said more than 38 million appointments have been lost since lockdown, and oral health inequality is set to widen.
The unprecedented backlog has left dentistry "hanging by a thread" with many dentists looking to change careers or seeking early retirement.
On January 25, NHS England pledged an extra £50 million for dentists to provide additional urgent care for NHS patients.
Funding will be available until the end of March and will be paid on a sessional basis.
Shawn Charlwood, chair of the General Dental Practice Committee said: “Any additional funding is long overdue recognition of the huge backlogs facing NHS dentistry.
“After a decade of cuts a cash-starved service risks being offered money that can’t be spent. Hard-pressed practices are working against the clock, and many will struggle to find capacity ahead of April for this investment to make a difference.
“Until today not a penny of the government’s multi-billion-pound catch-up programme had reached dentistry.
"This is progress but must be just the start if we are to rebuild a service millions depend on.”
When Ms Sheen was asked whether she would continue to try to get an appointment, she said no.
She said: "I've given up trying. I’m 61, so let’s hope the rest of my teeth will be with me till I die."
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