Dental work and me

Happy to say after 10 weeks and 5 dental appointments, my mouth is back up to full smiling capacity.
Years ago there was a book written by Erma Bombeck, titled “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?” I always got a kick out of Ms. Bombeck’s humor and enjoyed her writings.
A cherry pit is what recently cost me three healthy teeth and close to $6,000.

It’s ironic, my healthy lifestyle and way of eating was in some way part of the cause of this mishap.
I enjoy having nutritious smoothies for breakfast and my favorite smoothies are chocolate and contain frozen dark sweet cherries. Sadly, there was an undetected cherry pit that I bit down on and cracked a back tooth.

After a couple of days, I realized it was deeply cracked and not the little nick to my tooth I thought it was. When I could wiggle the inside half of the tooth, I made a dental appointment and soon met one of the sweetest dentists I’ve let in my mouth.

I’ve had the same superlative dentist for years and seen either him or his associate. Because of all this (the pandemic) I was long overdue for a visit. I had not met his newest associate, his daughter, yet. She was the one on duty for my emergency visit. Her skill is enough for me to trust her on the level I trust her father. Her caring people-loving nature qualifies her as my now to-go-to dentist.

She came in and met me while I was in the dental chair sobbing and gently asked what was wrong.
I wasn’t in any physical pain, but I was hurting. I was in full-on emotional distress.

I had felt my anxiety escalating on my drive over to the office. When I got to the parking lot, it dawned on me that one of my last involvements with my now deceased daughter had to do with dental work. It’s been over two years since she died suddenly at her home, a thousand miles away. A couple of months before her death, she had needed to have one of her teeth extracted and didn’t have the money. I made a call to the dentist and paid for it over the phone. I was happy to help and grateful to have the means. It was one of our last connections. She was in pain and needed care. Going to the dentist wasn’t anything that bothered her at all and she laughed when I asked her if she was fine.

Remembering that, was definitely having a triggering response effect on me. I started trembling in my car and was near tears as I sat for a few minutes in the parking lot, and regained my composure and focused on my own current dental issues. I went inside, interacted with the receptionist, waited a while and watched the TV, and chatted comfortably with the dental assistant when she came to get me and got me in the dental chair and prepped.
It wasn’t until I was alone, that a spontaneous wave of grief washed over me. Memories of my daughter’s dental emergency miles, and now years away reduced me to tears and I started sobbing.
When it comes to intense emotions, my mantra tends to be “better out than in” and I simply went with the flow, literally. That’s when Dr. K came in.

By all signs, voice tone and patterns, facial expression, body language, the caring in her eyes, all told me she is a genuinely compassionate person. Anyone who has experienced trauma knows, the best healing comes from an other. That’s why service dogs are so effective. At that moment in time, Dr. K was acting in the capacity of an other. I shared with her about the loss of my daughter and her dental emergency and how all of today’s dental emergency was causing some still-to-be-processed grief to resurface and beg my attention. Dr. K was sympathetic and we had a brief conversation, and that’s all it took to give me peace. The appointment went off without a hitch. We discussed my options, she glued me back together and I was good to go and off to see an oral surgeon at a later date.

Weeks went by with consultations and exams, an extraction, healing time, more appointments, and back again yesterday to put the final touches on my bridge work. During the in-between time, I remembered my first ever dental work encounter. I was a 3 year old witness to my mother’s teeth extractions. The story goes, even though my mother was in her late twenties didn’t have cavities; she did have gum disease and the dentist recommended removal of all her teeth. I only remember ever seeing my mom with a full set of dentures and accommodating them for the rest of her life.

I remember also being 3 years old, going to the dentist with my parents, and my mom getting several teeth at one time removed. Probably, less visits cost less money. My visual recall is shadowy, like most of my childhood memories. There are some memories we don’t want to see in the light of day. My mother is reclined back in the dentist chair, the dentist is positioned next to her, and I’m peering over him watching. I wasn’t there for the entire procedure, but I did see him remove some teeth. When my mother’s distress rose higher, and the dentist’s patience sank lower, I was shown the door. There was a waiting room, and Dad, and a bowl of candies, that I could pick from for a reward for being a good little girl.

Come to think of it, mom’s dentures caused a cascade of medical events that would result in the ending of her life.
She passed away a year ago in home hospice, after a stay in the hospital treating sepsis that would weaken her aging bodily systems. Over 60 years later, it was again Mom’s gums that needed attention.
Apparently, as she was aging at home and becoming more forgetful as a result of falls and prescriptions that needed to be adjusted, her dental hygiene took a dive. Feverish and weak, she was admitted to the hospital. It was there the cause of her problem was discovered to be an inflammation in her gum. After three weeks, she was sent home to hospice.

Apparently, on some level, my subconscious was connecting all the dental emergency dots to loss of loved ones.

There’s a saying about dental cavities being a result of a sweet life. All my teeth came in straight and pretty. I have a big mouth so all my wisdom teeth fit in comfortably. I did have cavities. My mother enjoyed her sweets, loved to bake desserts, and deceptively tricked us into eating vegetables by loading them with added sugar. One of my baby molars had to be pulled. As a teenager, most of my molars had the old school metal fillings. One molar was pulled during my first pregnancy.

When I left my mother to live with my father, part of me stayed connected to her with an alarming amount of sweets in my diet. Not the full course meals with homemade desserts, but certainly an abundance of sugar. Soft drinks all day, ice cream sandwiches for lunch, and chocolate candy bars a few times a week.

By my middle age, fillings were falling out and some teeth needed root canals. About that time I was seeing my neighborhood dentist in Tampa who would come to fire me midway through my dental treatment. I shared this memory yesterday with Dr. K. She was shocked at such a thing, sympathetic to me, and questioned my saying it was a funny story. But, my amusement proved contagious and I soon had her and the dental assistant giving in to laughter.

Nearly, 30 years ago I was seeing this dentist to repair those broken fillings and ever eroding teeth. My eating habits were more adult and healthy, but the previous shortcomings were catching up with me. I had been seeing him routinely for a couple of years and was on a friendly basis with him. Enough to know a little about his parents, his schooling at Emory, his growing pains of his new private practice, and his relatively new marriage. We had even talked about the struggles he’d had trying to find an Asian American woman that would meet his parents’ approval and he would want to marry and spend his life with. So, what happened next and how things ended shook me.

It was the beginning of my appointment, I was reclined back and with my mouth open when he got up and left me there. He had started booking appointments that would have him seeing two at a time. He still didn’t have a dental assistant. He had left me to go behind the partition and be with the other patient. Back then I wasn’t as in tune with my emotions and inner self as I am now. I wasn’t aware of internal warnings and triggers.

For two years, I was used to being seen without pause in our appointments. Being left alone spooked me. I was starting to become anxious to the point I was having an adrenaline rush and my whole body was shaking by the time he got back to me.

He was upset just looking at me. First, he demanded I stop shaking. Stammering, I tried to explain I was frightened. He demanded I leave. He told me he was under too much stress, the business pressures, and his marriage. Most importantly, he told me his wife was pregnant and that was it. He was of no mind, nor could he possibly take any more stress, and that meant a panicked patient. He showed me out.

My dentist fired me then and there as his patient.

All’s well that ends well. My fiance’ with the help of a longtime friend, helped us put together a wonderful team of dental associates. The dentist, the oral surgeon, and orthodontist, all came up with such a care plan to give me the finest dental results giving me my best mouth ever. For twenty-three years I’ve enjoyed the best dental health. I had one tiny cavity, all three bridges are still intact. Until. Until, the cherry pit and I crossed paths.

Oh well, life is good. I now have a new and beautiful dental bridge, better than the others. My calm and my smile has been restored.

I’m in good hands with Dr. K.
And she says she will never fire me.

(the end)

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