Friday, August 15, 2014

Quentin's Big Adventure

After a year of waiting I'm finally at the oral surgeon's office. I've battled 15 years of a dental and medical phobia, undergone two sinus surgeries advised by a previous oral surgeon, waited 7 weeks for this appointment and then an additonal 5 days because the doctor was sick for the first time in 13years on the originally scheduled day. We've scrambled through early morning rush hour traffic only to be told that there's a back up and I need to wait.

I'm here to get 6  teeth pulled because of the crippling phobia that I had previously had. I'm much better now and have seen many doctors and dentists in the last two years, but I still get very nervous, particularly before surgery. We're sitting in the empty waiting room. I'm holding it together but I'm nervous; my doctor calls it White Coat Syndrome. I get a burst of adrenaline in medical offices that jacks up my heart rate and blood pressure.

I'm sitting there trying to relax and we hear sobbing coming from down the hall. My first thought is it's like one of those old time comedy sketches where the patient hears screaming from down the hall but it's something like a cat's tail being squished. My second thought is that this is intense crying and something bad has happened to someone. Like maybe someone just found out they have oral cancer or something.

The receptionist turns to me and Lisa and says "Sorry. We've had a very dramatic morning here." She turns to the inner reception window as though she's about to try to head off the crying person coming down the hall, but the waiting room door bursts open and there's a sobbing woman.

This woman in her late 30's has a handful of tissue, her eyes are red and she's half sobbing half talking. "That's hard to watch." In my head I'm thinking what's hard to watch did someone just die or something?"He's only 10. This is awful."

I'm trying not to engage her. I'm the kind of person people just talk to and I'm really trying to put up my "The Doctor is Out" sign. I really don't want to hear any drama before I'm about to go under the knife myself. But she plunders on."They couldn't find a vein, they stabbed him 4 times and my son Quentin started screaming," more sobbing.

Lisa says "That's hard to watch. I'm sorry."

And the woman is off. She starts telling us the details of his surgery, how her 10 year old has an extra tooth in his palate and how they had already tried to take out the tooth but they took the wrong one...My brain latches onto that. At first I think she's talking about another doctor, but no, it's this one. My brain is about to overload here. I'm about to have 7 teeth pulled by a surgeon whose pulled out wrong teeth before and can't find deep veins, which I have. This must be some kind of demented cosmic joke. Put the hysterical lady in the same room with the recovering medical phobic.

She goes on and on. She starts to tell us how she has shallow roots and her dentist told her that her teeth could fall out at any moment. I think to myself please don't let that happen now because I'll never be able to come back to a dentist again.

She goes on and on until, mercifully, the nurse brings me in back. They're giving me gas and the doctor comes in and I'm pretty loose. I ask "How'd that kid Quentin do?" In my haze I think he gives me a strange look but he says "Aah he did good." Then I tell him about how hard it is for doctors to get a line in my arm and he seems  a little nervous. As I'm fading with the gas I count 3 tries before he gets a line in and says "Phew. I'm glad we got that in." My mind fades thinking of sore arms and screaming kids.

When I wake up in recovery the very first thing I remember seeing is a little old man in a wheel chair.  Wheeling out backwards in front of me. But a I focus I see it's not a little old man it's a kid; it's Quentin. I try to say something but my mouth is completely numb and my brain for words hasn't come back online yet. I'm thinking "Good job little buddy. You made it." Groggily I put my thumb up and smile. It was probably a pretty ghastly, bloody smile. At first the groggy kid looks confused. Who is the old guy smiling at him with bloody gauze pointing a thumb in the air. But as he gets wheeled out he perks up, smiles his bloody smile back at me and gives me a thumb up; brothers in arms(literally).

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Kids are hard.

Between being brand new with kids and having to work with the very wild Russian immigrants my first summer as camp counselor was wild. But nothing compared to some people. I noticed that there was one counselor, Tom, whose entire schedule seemed to consist of tree climbing. I thought this was just general laziness but during our first staff meeting he was called out on it by the assistant director, Flora who never got ruffled about anything.

"Hey man." He said sounding stoned, he always sounded stoned. "Trees are life and they're getting they're sharing life energy by climbing on trees."

Flora who was always patient replied "Well I get that but maybe you can limit the tree climbing to a few minutes when you have free time."

Tom closed his eyes "Hey man. I have to go where the energy tells me. I can't be a slave to schedules and rules." Flora's eyes went wide but she didn't say anything. I don't think it was a surprise to anyone when the Tom didn't show up the next Monday and there was a brand new counselor in charge of his group.

As exasperated as I was my group of Wild Russians, I didn't lose my composure. I can't say that of everyone. I was in the kitchen, taking a short break from my group to bake some cookies we'd mixed. There was a multi purpose room next to the kitchen and there was a little serving counter that let you look into the. I saw the group led by a guy named Dan whose co-counselor was Shelly. Like me she'd never worked with kids before, but she always seemed angry and intense. Their group was sitting in a small circle and being a little rowdy. Dan was off to the side helping tie a girl's shoes. Shelly was serving snack time. She'd given out crackers and cheese and was having the kids pass cups and she started to pour milk from carton. One of the kids kept taking the cups and throwing them around the circle.

. One of the crackers hit another kid in the forehead and she started to cry. I could see Shelly was visibly upset. I was about to help her but the timer went off on my cookies and I grabbed them out of the oven. I could hear Shelling telling this kid to stop and the kid just laughing. I put the cookies down and rounded the corner to help out. As I was doing this I heard a combination of gasps and laughter from the group. When I got into the room I saw the noisy kid covered with dripping white milk and Shelly holding an upside down carton; nobody was surprised when she didn't come back the next day.