Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Tooth Pain Rant.... and Gardenias, too!

I hate the dentist. Have I mentioned this? I HATE going to the dentist. I have horrible memories of my first dentist, though when my mom finally got the picture that the crotchety old man terrified me, she found me a much nicer pediatric dentist and he was okay, but I mean, who likes going to the dentist, right? And then I had this orthodontist who had these HUGE, MASSIVE, MEATY hands (they belonged on a butcher. Seriously, I always felt that way) and here he was trying to manipulate pieces of metal into my very tiny mouth (every person who has ever worked on my teeth/mouth has commented on how tiny my mouth is) and it was several years of torture, though he, at least, tried to be nice about it.

So I avoid the dentist like the plague. I think I've been to the dentist 3 times since I became an adult (my pediatric dentist stops taking kids at 18) and 2 of those times were at my moms request, just before my wedding when she begged me to have my teeth cleaned and a filling put in a cavity that showed when I smiled.

Plus, I have bad teeth. I blame that gallons of undiluted apple juice I drank as a kid, even during the nighttime (I was allowed to have a cup of it by my bedside for years and would wake up feeling dry and take a swig) and the fact that I, like most people, don't brush or floss often enough or well enough. But anyhow, my teeth are not great, so I have a tendancy towards cavities anyhow...

But I have a tooth ache. And when I finally sucked it up to go see a dentist about it yesterday, I was informed that a) it was possibly infected and b) the decay was severe enough that I would need to see an oral surgeon to have it extracted or have a root canal done, since it was bad enough that this dentist couldn't take care of it for me. Ugh.

As if finding a babysitter wasn't hard enough for FUN reasons, now I need to find one in the middle of the day, during regular business hours to get this darn thing taken care of. And it's obviously not something I can fudge and bring her along if the babysitting thing doesn't work out... I already had to ask my husband to come home early yesterday for the first appointment, where I was hoping they could just TAKE CARE OF IT, but it's hard for me to do that to him repeatedly - his boss isn't all that great about family obligations, though I admit getting him to let my husband work from yesterday was surprisingly easier than I expected...

And I have to get my OB to tell them all this stuff about what I can have - anesthetics, pain meds, antibiotics, etc. because OF COURSE they don't know all this stuff and they have to cover their backsides (which, truly, I understand and I appreciate as far as it goes to protect me and my baby, but isn't it something they should know? Can't you just give a pregnant woman some Novocaine and move on? I cannot be the first pregnant woman to ever need dental work...) so I have to make a zillion phone calls to the OB, too.

The one bright spot over the last couple of days is that our gardenia bushes are in bloom and my husband makes a habit of gathering some great blooms and bringing them inside for me, so every time I pass them, I get this awesome scent of gardenia flowers... Even the gardenia bush that my old co-workers sent me when Fuss was born is blooming. (It was blooming great when I got it, but this is the first flower I remember seeing since we planted it. I don't think it gets quite enough sun, but it's likely too late to transplant it elsewhere)

So here I am. Tooth aching, begging people to babysit my daughter so I can be tortured by someone I will then have to pay a fortune to. But at least my house smells good.

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