9 CAVITIES! You must understand how awful this is: Armageddon must be upon us! I have formerly been every dentist's sweetheart & poster child. Attending the U of I Dental college was a treat. You could flash to the other patients in Morse Code with the mobile overhead lights. I KNEW every flavor (and time duration) of every flouride treatment! (Never do the bubblegum or tangerine - they totally make you gag, but the tropical punch had a nice aftertaste . . .)
How embarrassing then, to go to my dental appointment today and have them pull up a screen and start identifying my cavities. "*ping* "Lower left, #5 . . .lower left #6, a kissing cavity - covering both sides. Lower left #9 . . ." *ping! ping!*"
I've been around dentists chairs enough to understand some of the lingo: emesial buckle, loose amalgum on the posterior, gingivitis extreemus on the lingual composite, I know what you're looking at! As my dentist looked, it was like discovering lottery numbers,
"#12 AND #13, *ping!* and an extra pinhole cavity on the anterior! *ping ping!*"
They gave me an "estimate" to fix my dental indiscressions. Almost $3,000. Because you'd want porcelain there up front so that no one could tell how badly you've fallen from grace. "That'll be extra, of course . . .your insurance doesn't cover that."
What a let down! How could this happen? I didn't get praise. I didn't get paraded around to other patients as proof that a soul CAN take care of their teeth. I got a flossing lesson and a new tooth brush to use, "with little circles, circling, circling . . ."
I KNOW HOW TO BRUSH MY TEETH, GOSH DARN IT! I'm the dentists SWEETHEART! I show OTHER patients how to brush! After feelings of self-pity and cold hard photographic evidence of my cavities, I have begun to feel like Ebenezer Scrooge; perhaps there is still time to change! Maybe we'll fix these little, cavities, and I'll be back in every dentists good graces again! Yes!
Then I think of the Final Judgment. I'll bet it's a lot like today's dental appointment. "Yah, I could tell I was slipping a little, but I didn't know that it was bad enough to get demoted to a lower kingdom . . ." Right now I'm salving my hurt feelings with Jell-O. I'm going to get better pretty quick. After I use this crutch to get over the trauma. I need more pudding.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
And for my Birthday the Dentist showed to Me . . .
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
That is crummy! What a bummer! Now, are you sure you aren't going to one of those "Drill and Fill" dentists? Our family dentist/family friend back home described some dentists as being that way, others more conservative - "watch and see types." My check up last week ended up with a very bloody cleaning - "Pregnancy gingivitis" and a small spot to fill which I am doing next week.
I SO know your pain. I didn't have a cavity until I was 20. And even then, I'm not really sure it was a legit cavity. They'd been "watching it" for a couple of years. Finally, they said, "nothing has changed, but let's just fill it anyway."
My perfect record was broken and I'm obviously still bitter almost 10 years later.
The best was when I had a dentist identify a cavity on my wisdom teeth...5 years after they had been removed. You can be sure I never went back, much less scheduled the appointment for the "filling".
My sister would probably know how you felt that day, Katrina. You see, she didn't also have cavities until she was 25. Before that, she was just boastful and all, telling our neighbors and friends in St. Petersburg that she was born with perfect teeth. So it really hit her hard when the dentists told her that she had holes in her teeth. Well, that made her shut up.
Post a Comment