Smile, just smile...

I sat two hours in the dentist chair today...They gave me a new smile :) Great, wonderful, awesome! Except for the drilling, drilling, drilling and they did not have a radio today...They always have music there! Are ya kiddin me? How will I distract myself ? How will I get through this? I had my
I-phone with me and turned on Pandora radio and it was good, I could hear it until he started drilling, then they could hear it but I could not hear it...Aaargh!

 

So I did the only thing I could do...Pray, and after one Our Father, I had plenty of time left so I let my mind ramble and the only thing I could think of was Dental Abuse! Aaargh! I am a victim and was traumatized as a child. Here was the deal; in the 1950s-60s, the dentist was not a place my family went to on a regular basis and dental insurance? We didn't even have health insurance! So when we were writhing in pain, they would finally break down and bring us...Well! it cost $12 to fill a tooth and it cost $10 to pull a tooth, so you guessed it! I had a lot of teeth pulled!



In second grade, my brother, in the only intentional violent act of his life, pushed me down a slide and I chipped my front tooth...Enter more trauma, every single school picture from then on would be evidence of that fateful day...To this day, my brother denies his participation in any such crime...Oh, OK, it wasn't you! a statement I would make many times in my life I would soon learn.

I suffered with a dysfunctional smile until I was married. At least I found someone who didn't mind the shadow of my smile to marry me...He never did seem to notice. Well, I will tell you that after several more tooth pullings, and a long list of different dentists, I ended up with a dentist that said "Ya know...I could file that front tooth of yours and you would hardly even notice that chip"...And so he did...and he didn't even charge me...And guess what? You could hardly notice it anymore....Crap, I had to pay extra for my senior pictures in high school to have my teeth filled in!

Suffice it to say, from that moment on, I would never be afraid to make dentist appointments for my children again...thought I was gonna say for me, huh? Well, I continued to go to dentist after dentist after dentist. What was I looking for? I don't know, pain-free experience?

And so, back to today, it was a little more than $12, it was 200 times more, and that was $2400 and my dental insurance had already paid $1500! This was option #2, the first option was 1000 times more...$12,000! That is pretty much half a car, so I guess I will take Door #2!

Won't ya smile awhile for me, Sara