Sweet Relief

I showed up at the oral surgeon’s office yesterday morning at 9:16. My appointment was scheduled for 9:15, but my driver (my mother) was a tad bit late, having gotten a whopping three hours of sleep the night before due to a nasty flu-like bug. Still, she managed to get me to the office in, like, three minutes flat. I was impressed with her driving for someone so sleep deprived. One minute late was pretty amazing. In fact, in Stephanie Time, that’s like 15 minutes early.

Anyway, I sat down to fill out my paperwork, excited that I was there by 9:16, thinking my appointment was probably not until 9:30. That’s what they do, you know–they tell you to be there fifteen minutes ahead of time to fill out the paperwork so you’ll be ready by the time your appointment actually rolls around, and I can write like the wind. So I was on line 3 of said paperwork, patting myself on the back for being so quick with this stuff, and a lovely woman burst through the door and barked my name. Already distressed at having to have the “S” word (surgery, for those of you that have potty mouths, not the OTHER “S” word), I was now upset about not having completed my paperwork.

As we walked to the back, she turned to me, took the clipboard from my hands and said, in a very sweet, syrupy, I’m completely annoyed with you, voice, “We’re just going to have to fit you in… since you were LATE.”

Huh? Late? By one minute? Seriously?

It took me about 2.3 seconds to snap out of my unhappy place and move right on into my sarcastic place. This woman could NOT be for real. Here I was, shaking in my shoes because I was having a tooth yanked out of my head, and she was complaining about one minute? Weren’t surgery places supposed to hire folks with some sort of decent bedside manner? This woman had the bedside manner of a drill sergeant!

“My appointment was for 9:15. I was here at 9:16. I apologize for the one-minute delay, but surely you could cut me some slack on that!” I responded to her as she marched me back to the room.

“Your appointment was at 9:00,” she replied, in her best “I’m more annoyed than you” voice.

“Well, perhaps you should let your office personnel know,” I snapped back, “because the word I got was 9:15. And here I am.”

She gave me a forced smile, and said, “Let’s get an x-ray then.”

“I brought the x-ray with me, as requested,” I said. “I gave it to the same folks that scheduled my appointment.” I’m not usually this curt with people, but I had been in severe pain since Monday, I was going to have someone pry my tooth out of the socket, I was probably facing some serious pain, I was already sick of Jell-o and was dealing with the prospect of several more days of it, I had gotten very little sleep because Advil only goes so far, and I was DONE with her attitude already.

“Yes,” she said impatiently, “but the doc wants a panoramic. Let’s get it out of the way so we can get that tooth out.”

Evidently my curt response to her made her think twice about her continued attitude. Suddenly, she moved on to sweetness and light, directing me to take out my earrings, getting me an envelope so they wouldn’t get lost, and even putting them in my purse for me. She asked a few questions about the amount of pain I was in, clucked sympathetically when I told her that it had been very painful since Monday, and generally tried to be a decent human being from that point forward.

Unfortunately, she had already ruined the mood for me. I deal with ugliness with humor and she had ripped the humor right on out of me, long before the tooth extraction had even begun.

Thankfully the entire extraction process was about 15 minutes, from anesthesia to stuffing my mouth with gauze. The doc was very pleasant and almost restored my good mood. The drugs helped a lot. Thank God for novacaine, is all I can say. I didn’t feel a darned thing (after the initial stick, which he called “a little pinch” and made me want to stab him in the eye with whatever blunt instrument I could lay my hands on), just lots of pressure.

The sound is pretty disgusting. I’m not fond of hearing the bone break and crunch at all. But when it finally came free, it was a little slice of heaven. It was instant relief. The doc stuffed that whole side of my mouth with gauze and gave me a dozen instructions for after care. The best part, I thought, was that he gave me both his cell phone number and his home phone number and advised me that, should I have ANY issues whatsoever, even after hours, I should call directly. Very cool. That pretty much made up for Senorita Stuffy Pants.

The rest of the day went as I expected. The local wore off and it was pretty painful, although it never reached the level of pain I was in on Monday. I took some Advil to keep the worst of it at bay. I ate a lot of popsicles, which made Freddy very happy since he was home with me and matched me pop for pop. And I slept last night. The deep, sound sleep of someone that has been up all night with tooth pain for several days.

By this morning? No Advil. Just a little pain. There is definitely a BIG hole back there, and everything seems to get stuck in it, but I am so gloriously, deliriously relieved at not feeling that horrid, throbbing, infected pain anymore that I could dance for joy.

Ah…. sweet relief. It’s a beautiful thing.