So on Thursday evening, or more technically Friday morning, I was out for my daily constitutional, ironically chewing a piece of delicious watermelon BubbleYum bubblegum, when I heard and felt a CRUNCH in my mouth. Chewing very carefully and nimbly I located, in the BubbleYum, the object which had caused the offending crunch and removed the BubbleYum, with the imbedded object from my mouth and examined it under a street light. I found a small, cracked and separated mass of hard, off white bits with various dark spots. “Odd†I thought – “that looks like a filling…â€
SHIT.
After running my tongue around my teeth I found that, yes, indeed, one of my many fillings was ensconced in this sweetly odorous, pink mass of BubbleYum. Oh Joy. On the plus side, there was no associated pain, and there still is not. God willing that trend will continue.
So upon my return home, I left various notes for Sandy to call the dentist first thing in the morning when she got up – knowing that Sandy would be up hours before I would be, and seriously desiring an emergency dentist’s appointment on Friday afternoon.
I awoke the next morning when Sandy brought me the phone so that I could talk to the receptionist at the dentists office, who proceeded to diagnose my problem as something not requiring any serious concern; after which she informed me that because the doctor was only in until noon, that he could not possibly do anything for me, but was happy to inform me that there was a time available on Monday afternoon when my non-issue could be addressed.
Now – I almost called another dentist that moment, and perhaps I should have – but I like my dentist, and he does good work, and rarely – if ever, hurts me. I have not had a dentist that was this pain free ever. I LIKE this dentist. Good ones are hard to find. And while ultimately he IS responsible for the conduct of his staff – it is not entirely his fault that his receptionist is, well – loco.
If everyone involved (including the receptionist) is lucky, when I show up on Monday, the doctor won’t say “WOW, you should have called me Friday – it would have been nothing then – now it looks like a root-canal…â€
The thing is – that I have been worried about the thing, and I have been trying to baby the thing all weekend – 3 days now – when the bloody doctor should have seen me on Friday afternoon, and been done with it. And yes, it is true that the tooth has not caused me any appreciable pain in the last 72 hours – short of wearing a raw spot on my tongue, and a psychosomatic sensitivity appearing in an adjacent tooth – it is still pretty bloody unprofessional to not replace a filling as soon as a person presents with it. I know that if a parishioner were to call me up and express some sort of concern to me, that they felt required immediate attention, and my response was “WOW – I have worked a whole 4 hours today – there is no way I can possibly see you until … well… 4 days from now,†I would not expect to see or hear from that parishioner again.
So – I’m a bit annoyed – both with the prospect of something being wrong with my tooth (which admittedly there probably is not) and with the lack of professionalism I have experienced.
