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).
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