Dental Handicap
Posted on September 13, 2007
Filed Under marriage, kids, parenting, suburban joys, snark, milestones, dental disasters |
Wish us, or I should say, O, good luck today as he is scheduled to have a molar extraction this morning at 8:30 a.m. A MOLAR EXTRACTION!!! And the kid is only 8 years old. Thankfully I am approaching a time when I can forgive myself for the shit storm occurring in his mouth. I am almost beyond pointing the finger at myself and saying, “Bad, bad mother for not brushing, flossing and administering fluoride rinse energetically enough way to protect his tiny eight year old teeth from the evils of decay.” I am close to granting myself amnesty because I see how other parents do or don’t, as the case may be, get the job done in the dental department and feel that if little Lucy LooHoo down the street can go to bed each night with a sippy cup full of Capri Sun and wake in the morning to a healthy portion of CocoPebbles, skipping off to school without passing a brush over those pearly whites and never come up with a cavity, then there must just be something inherently wrong with my son’s set of ivory. He brushes, then I brush, then I hold him down while passing dental tape through each divide, suffering his whining protests. Each night we fight the good dental hygiene fight and for what, God damn it? I don’t know ANY parents still brushing their third grader’s teeth for them and they seem to be molar-extraction-free for the most part.
So O is coming to terms with the fact that he has been born with a dental handicap. (I blame My Better Half though he insists his teeth didn’t start to fall out of his head until his late twenties. The estimate we recently received for My Better Half’s dental work exceeded $40,000. Needless to say he’s making due with four good teeth he has left.)
O is stoic in the face of oral surgery. He has even offered to forgo the Nitrous Oxide cocktail that the surgeon recommends for taking the edge during extraction. O, upon learning that the Laughing Gas would cost us $150 extra, had nasty flashbacks of my going a little insane after his last $750 dollar trip to the dentist. He is willing to endure such great discomfort to spare himself the embarrassment that is his mother dumping her purse out on the dentist’s counter and shaking the damn thing, up side down, with the hope that some spare change or a loose $100 would dislodge itself from the lining.
I am not too proud to admit that I called the surgeon yesterday and ventured the idea that my son would like to try the procedure without the Nitrous Oxide. The receptionist didn’t even try to hide her disdain and disbelief. “I will mention this to the doctor, but, Ma’am, it’s highly unusual for us to do an extraction on a child without making the child, well, ‘more comfortable’.” This was receptionist speak for, “Go fuck yourself, you cheap and horrible whore who has no business being a parent.”
So O will be receiving a dose of sunshine while the big bad surgeon reaches a hand into the nether regions of his little head and yanks the offending tooth, dark cavernous cavity and all, from his bleeding gums. I promise I will photograph the pitted remains of molar B for all to see what $350, a medical degree and wrench will buy you.
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