Daily Read #8 - Tooth Fairy/Grim Reaper

Thank you for sticking with us.
Thank you for inviting your friends to join you in sticking with us.
Thank you for most of all voting for Ryan to win Lasik because that is of course what this is all for.

If you feel that not all of the above apply to you, I will not rescind a single appreciation, which means you just need to start living up to my assumptions:) Trust me you'll thank me later as with all this good you're doing, the blessings are in the mail I'm sure.

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So in honor of an entire week maintaining a blog, my wife and I did something we haven't done for a long, long time. Well since before she was my wife actually. We both went to the dentist. For my wife it had been half a decade. For me it had only been 58 months which I'd say was significantly better.

I honestly held out hope that maybe the dentist had just returned from humanitarian work so that maybe we wouldn't look so bad because he had just paid a visit to this guy's village:



What does it feel like to go to the dentist after a 4-5 year unexcused absence? What does it feel like to not pay your taxes for 4-5 years and then get audited? On the latter I don't have a clue but if it's anything like the former, it's pretty uncomfortable. We hesitated in the parking lot wondering if we really had to do this today or even this year. But we've been paying for dental insurance for two years now might as well get our money's worth.

We eventually went in separately agreeing that if it wasn't really bad for both of us there was no need for the other to suffer from guilt by association. I actually shielded my mouth when I spoke with the receptionist for fear that she was wearing special black light glasses that give her the heads up on dental derelicts.

Take a stab at who was the grave offender of the almighty tooth for our marriage?

Is it my wife who has a crush on Willy Wonka and has stashes of hard candy throughout the house cached away like a squirrel does winter nuts? No she's the slender candy fiend with teeth as strong as Jaws the James Bond villain.

Now she didn't get off scot-free--she had three cavities but two were on the single tooth that has an existing filling so that hardly counts. And the other one was tiny on on a back molar.

When the assistant called me back, I thought what do I mention first? The crown that fell off a year ago and has yet to be replaced? The filling that fell out last month? Or nothing, if they're worth their salt as a dentist those things should be obvious. I'll take number 3 please.

Dental Assistant: How are you?
Me: Fine, Thanks.
Dental Assistant: Anything causing you pain.
Me: No I think we're fine [Royal 'We' to include the teeth of course].
Dental Assistant: Anything the dentist should know about?
Me: No not really. I'm sure we'll get to know each other.
Dental Assistant: Okay well I'll just get started on the X-rays then.
[inserts first x-ray film]
Dental Assistant: Huh! Those lower teeth bothering you at all?
Me: [Mental check. Filling fell out of upper left missing tooth upper right] No the lower teeth are fine.
Dental Assistant: Ok. That's good. I just think I see some cavities there. I'm glad they're not causing you pain.
Me: Thanks [Thinking. If you can see them with the naked eye must we proceed with the formality of x-rays?]

Teeth polished. Teeth cleaned. (not sure why they proceeded in that order) Meeting with the dentist.

Let's just say the polishing was like mashing potatoes with a ceiling fan. For the cleaning she had to use a hammer and chisel. The examination--More like the Spanish Inquisition--went pretty much like Battleship with someone who can read minds.

18 f,19 do,20 m,21 ac: You just sunk my battleship, Dr.

I'm literally going to need enough crowns to outfit a size-able royal family. And we didn't even talk about the tooth I am missing. Other than him confirming that I was aware that it was missing. [Thank you good sir my tongue has been wondering about that].

Laying out the 'treatment' schedule was like orchestrating D-day. The receptionist had to add more paper to the printer and asked if I'd like it stapled or spiral bound. Naturally I said that I wanted to wait to make any appointments until after we've gone through Open Enrollment; Figuring we'd likely want to up our coverage. Is a snaggle mouth a pre-existing condition?

I'm not sure when I'm going to finally break down and decide that having teeth is better than not having teeth. When I do, I'm going to wear a T-Shirt to the appointment that says 'May I pay your mortgage this month?'.

Now lest you think this post is only about me. I shared my own tale of the end of an extended sabbatical from the dentist in order to transition into a story about how an extended absence from the dentist began for Rachel.

Naturally it was before her wedding in the mad dash to get all 'elective' procedures done before leaving dependent status on my parents health coverage. It was decided that Rachel should get her wisdom teeth out. Now I did make fun of an eldest's exaggeration about the snow boots but the oldest child does have to go through a couple of a parent's painful 'Firsts and Only's'.

Having an oral surgeon sounded too expensive so it was decided that our regular family dentist would extract Rachel's wisdom teeth without sedation. Our family dentist has been the family dentist for decades. Our mother babysat his children who would almost all grow up to be dentists for the same clinic. The patriarch of the practice was very good friends with our grandparents and even after retirement would often come into the clinic particularly to work with long time patients/friends.

Well Rachel had her wisdom teeth out as planned, all but one of which were impacted. The extraction was not very pleasant but that pain paled in comparison to the pain when she developed dry sockets before they healed. The dentist had her come back so that he could address them. While Grandfather DDS wasn't the one who had extracted her wisdom teeth he was the one that attended to her in her swollen agony.

Apparently a common treatment for dry sockets is to rinse them with a salt-water solution [which you will see that it creates a salt-water problem]. Now when you have an inflamed open wound, salt, in any dilution, is never a welcome guest. A squirt from his little syringe of the salt solution directly into her wound had the same effect as if rocket launchers had engaged below that reclined examination chair. She described the pain as intense as an atomic bomb. In her writhing, Rachel reacted by grabbing this very seasoned old man's leg and squeezing with all the intensity of the pain she had just had endured. She looked him straight in his grandfather eyes and said, 'You will never hurt me like that again.'

She got up, walked out of the office and never walked back in.

Dry sockets healed; apparently the salt water worked. The dentist decided that maybe retirement wasn't so bad after all.

[For the record, We still love this dental office. They've been so good to our family. And I would recommend Brown Family dental to anyone within a 200 mile radius of Cedar City. Even if it's been five years since you went to the dentist, they would find something nice to say like, '#5 looks really good; I can tell that you're doing a lot to take care of it.]

I'm sure at some point in their marriage Ryan has felt the kind of leg squeeze now referred to as 'The Retirement Party'.

Just another reason,

He deserves your vote.

Much Thanks.