October 14, 2003
Have you ever meant to do something, but you’re busy, so you put it off? And a week passes, then a month passes, and before you know it, several presidential elections have come and gone?
I did that between trips to the dentist. I went just before I started college, and before I knew it, I was having my 10-year high school reunion. As God as my witness, I am not afraid of the dentist, nor am I a raging slob who doesn’t appreciate the importance of good dental hygiene. Granted, I don’t exactly get off on dental visits, either, as they tend to be about as pleasant as watching Senate Appropriations Committee meetings on C-SPAN, only with a little more drilling and slightly less drooling. But I truly had no conscious intentions to put off the dentist; one thing led to another, and things (finals, relationships, family emergencies, job changes, moves, presidential scandals, etc.) kept coming up.
Finally, after the sudden realization hit that a decade had passed, I decided that, dammit, it was time to go. Seeing as the last dentist I saw was several cities ago, I had to ask around to find a new (to me) dentist. A co-worker gave me a list of several recommended dentists; I called one, and made an appointment at the earliest opening, which was in one month.
That month passed. The day before the scheduled appointment, I noticed that the dentist’s number was on my caller ID when I got home from work. I checked my messages, figuring the standard confirmation message had been left.
Nope.
A very apologetic woman left a vague message, asking me to call the next morning because something had come up, and I needed to reschedule. Baffled and just a wee bit annoyed, I called and was told that they were renovating the office -- and that things had not gotten finished as planned.
Seeing as they had cancelled on me with less than 24 hours’ notice, I was VERY tempted to harangue this woman and inform her I was sending them a bill, seeing as that is exactly what they would do to me if I had cancelled an appointment on such short notice. But she was again apologetic, and asked me to call back the following Monday to reschedule; by then, she said, they’d know when the office would be ready for business again.
I dutifully called on Monday. Although it was during office hours, I got voice mail, so I left a message for the apologetic woman to call me back.
I never heard from that office again. I figured this must be a sign from God that I was not meant to go to the dentist, but my friends didn’t buy, and I didn’t want for my teeth to get so rotten that people started to think I was English, so I decided to make an appointment with another dentist. I called the No. 2 dentist on my list, and they informed me there had just been a cancellation: I could get an appointment the very next day!
Oh boy!
The next day, I showed up for my appointment, and all in all, it wasn’t bad. The cleaning went OK, and the X-rays were annoying, but survivable. They told me my teeth were in great shape considering my dental years of dental-office neglect: I had five cavities, "at least three" of which were so tiny they wouldn’t even need Novocain to fill them, I was told.
Emboldened, I went back for my second appointment. The hygienist finished my cleaning, and the dentist filled my first three cavities. It was painless.
Two weeks later, I returned to get my final two fillings done. I was confident and not the least bit nervous.
Then he got out the needle. Apparently, "at least three" was equivalent to "no more than three." But heck, I am a big boy. I can handle a little pain. The dentist said he needed to give me two shots. The first shot proved that I could handle the pain, no problem.
What I couldn’t handle was the hideous bitter taste from all the Novocain getting shot into my mouth after he painfully jabbed me in the wrong spot for the second shot.
After a semi-major scene (and some very major gagging), the teeth were filled. As I left the office and went to the reception area to check out, I debated whether I would return to this, or any, dentist anytime soon; this appointment had NOT been pleasant.
But they surprised me by making an appointment for me six months down the line automatically.
Dammit.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan in exile in Arizona who thinks flossing is a disgusting exercise. Jimmy’s column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org.