DelBloggolo: THE CALL COMES FROM JUNIOR

Thursday, October 30, 2014

THE CALL COMES FROM JUNIOR

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Cute little assistants were coming out to greet each patient in the waiting room, and I wondered which cutie I’d get. There was the gal with the long black exotic hair and eyes to match, the brunette with the smile that saved the company lighting bills and of course a blond who looked like she knew she was beautiful but wished you would ignore it.

I turned to a magazine, you know, those paper things with the pictures and one or two ads, dated March 2003? Suddenly someone was standing over me, blocking out the light on my Architectural Digest. This young man, maybe 14 said: “Mr. Del Bloggolo?” Dressed like he came from the operating room as the brunette passed us, I wanted my money back, even if I didn’t pay anything yet. Just my luck.

Inviting me to sit in the chair in an empty examining room, I asked for a trim around the ears and not too short. Ignoring my attempt at brevity he asked politely what was wrong. “Well, I have this tooth (pointing to it) and when I bite down it hurts!”

He looks at it and starts to take x-rays. This is a process that has become very annoying, taking up the last of the pain-free time I used to spend in the chair. It has a long rod with a plastic circle that runs up and down the arm, that is positioned in your mouth so the x-ray has a target. You put this thing in your mouth like a sandwich, but it doesn’t fit, hurts and becomes annoying if used for tooo long. It was ANNOYING! But what happens is the x-rays appear immediately on a computer screen, enabling the doctor to move quickly, not having to wait for the pictures to come back from CVS or Costco!

Suddenly, the Grand Pupa arrives, and bends over and asks: “Do you have an area where you are having trouble?” “Yes” I reply, I’m picking all the wrong teams in professional sports!” He: “In your mouth!” “Oh!” I explain the tooth problem, he studies the x-rays and then looks again in my mouth, and makes his diagnosis public: “I don’t see anything! Maybe it is the gum or the root. He schedules another appointment for root canal and a promise to look harder at the tooth in question and I leave, a little disappointment.

The next day I am having lunch, chewing carefully but sometimes out of habit I would chew on the wrong side. All of a sudden… there is this hard piece floating in my mouth! I reach in and find what looks like a small pebble and wonder where it came from? I run my tongue around my teeth and find nothing then it hits the tooth in question. Half of it is gone! It broke in half and they couldn’t see it!