Be on Time and Wait

After haranguing me with a text message, three days ago, requesting I confirm today’s appointment at the dental office (I confirmed), an email that same day requesting same (I confirmed again), then a phone call (again I confirmed), followed by a reminder text message and email this morning, I arrived promptly at 12:41 today for my 12:45 appointment and waited until 1:10 to be called in for my annual x-ray.

Feeling impatient and more than a little pissed off the dental office had gone to such extremes to make sure I arrived on time only to have me wait, I came thisclose to getting up and walking out at 1:00 but powered through because I needed a cleaning and a tooth looked at.

I have zero pain tolerance, so it was bad news to be told a crown is separating from the tooth and needs to be replaced. But not as bad as what I heard going on in the chair on the other side of the partition.

I heard “tooth broken off at the gum line.”

The woman explained, “I was chomping on some chicken and felt something funny”.

Was she trying to eat the bone?

At any rate, there was so much noise interference, from other conversations, that I couldn’t hear everything the dentist was telling her, but I did hear her options are “bridge or implant”.

The dentist giving me my bad news, which is nothing in comparison, except I am not keen on having the tooth taken care of, because of my low pain threshold, wasn’t my regular guy. My regular guy, Dr. McDreamy, with his silver-haired handsome self, was only working half day today, because he had drop-off and pickup duty for his son as his wife went out of town to attend to her terminally ill mom.

And no, I didn’t ask for all that detailed information, but I didn’t mind getting it.

When I told this morning’s dentist that I have a low pain threshold and would rather live with a little ache, he said “If you chose to ignore the problem, it will cause a worse problem down the road” and that the fix “Won’t hurt. They’ll numb the area”.

“Yes, but the numbing shot hurts”, said I.

“Well yes. That’s the worst part”.

And that's the part I'm afraid of. Last time I had one of those shots, I hurt for days.

I’m such a coward when it comes to pain that I’m contemplating if it’s worth it, at my age, to have the procedure. Like, how long before the tooth gets worse versus how long do I have to live? Will I die/run out of life before the tooth gets worse so having the procedure done now is useless or what?

At any rate, I thanked this morning’s dentist for his input, but said I hope he’d not be offended that I’d be making an appointment with Dr. McDreamy for a second opinion.

Appointment made. I go back next Wednesday.

I’ll probably get thirty thousand reminders to be on time. But if they make me wait again, I'll take it as a sign to leave well-enough alone and walk out. I've done so before, actually twice, but at medical appointments because my time is just as valuable as theirs.

The woman with the tooth broken off at the gum didn’t bat an eyelash at her prognosis, I’m freaking out over a crown replacement.

Maybe she gets off on pain.