Dental Emergency

Early this week I thought, you know, it's time for me to make an appointment for the dentist. I had tried to get in with a new dentist just before chemo started (you're not supposed to go when your immune system is compromised) but the dentist didn't have an opening in time. Monday I decided, now is probably the time to try again since I'm all done with treatment.

As fate would have it, I broke a tooth within 24 hours of deciding to find a dentist. Instant dental emergency! This time, the dentist who runs the practice was available and I made an appointment for today.

So, what's the first thing I did to get ready for the appointment? Well, after months of wearing almost no makeup, I pulled out the eye shadow and mascara and tarted myself up. Why? Well, when I'm nervous, my mind pulls up all sorts of statistics and studies in an effort to help. This time it retrieved a study showing that the more people perceive you as attractive, the nicer they are and the better service you get. When someone is going to be drilling in my mouth, I'd want niceness, so I picked out my best shirt, put a cute hat over my uber-short hair, and went to the dentist. You do what you can!

What I forgot was that, as with any kind of medical/dental exam, I had to rehash the cancer thing all over again. Once you have cancer - at least, this close to diagnosis - the health care field doesn't let you forget about it. The dentist was immediately worried about doing major dental work on me given that I'd had chemo, so he insisted I get sign-off from my oncologist saying it was safe.

He did a cancer screening on me, feeling up the lymph nodes below my jaw. He pointed out two hard nodules that he found and asked when I'd be seeing my oncologist again. My, doesn't that relax a girl in a dental chair! I told him I'd see her in a couple of weeks. He made me promise to have her check these lymph nodes. I knew it was nothing, but I really hate the topic coming up anyway. 

Aside from that, I liked the dentist and he was quite the hero today. He patched up my molar (said it was a clean break that didn't expose nerves) and said I could wait a while until I did the hard-core dental work. Yay, Mr. Dentist! He could have tortured me, but he didn't. I bet it had nothing to do with my eye shadow, but I'm going to pretend it did. It'll give me a powerful defense weapon for next visit.

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