The Intimacy of Detail

Getting to know you…getting to know all about you!

I had a discussion with the Captain this morning about switching to a new dentist. Our esteemed dentist, someone whom we have known for many years; his kids went to school with our kids, I attended the same church as he and his family for some time, we saw one another at social gatherings. In fact the first time I met him I commented on his fabulous teeth and my sister in law told me he was a dentist! I took this as a good sign and that is why we began seeing him professionally. His hygienist (a uniquely American career path) has always cleaned our teeth to within a millimeter of our gums, she has shown us how to floss correctly, how to use an electric toothbrush and a water pik, she has saved our teeth. She knows where all the little sensitive parts are hidden, she has taught us how to use a specific brand of toothpaste to help alleviate this pain, she found the little bump on my gum line that lead to the root canal before it got infected and would have been very painful. We trusted this team, they had our backs and the inside of our mouths. An appointment with this dentist however also included the nazi front desk lady. Woe betide anyone who skipped an appointment, she would send you an e-mail the likes of which would forbid you from ever doing it again. And you would be banned from actually having an appointment. She would allow you back into the oral fold only upon the proper cancellation of someone else. If you kept that appointment and all others for an undetermined but appropriate length of time, you were back. I respect this style, I wonder however if the actual dentist knew about it. The billing, the insurance forms, all this was brilliantly taken care of, we never had to wonder what was covered or file a claim, she did that for us and in a timely manner we would receive our tiny due from the insurance company. This tacit agreement; that we would subject ourselves to her unpleasantness in exchange for great dental care went on for many years, then suddenly the unimaginable happened; he retired. For good this time, he had tried it once before and came back to open a second practice after the most recent financial crash. But this was the final curtain. Now what. 

Apparently what happens in these situations is that a retiring professional can sell his client list to another dentist, clients are then notified by both the new practice and the former that an appointment can be made to see if there is a good match. It's a bit like online dating but without all the social anxiety. But you do have to start all over again, new faces, new people learning the intimate details of the inside of your mouth. Remember, the last relationship was based on their getting to know your insides while regaling you with the story of their lives. Face it, this was never a two way conversation, your mouth rendered useless by virtue of their hands and tools being inside of it most of the time. Consequently I knew many things about my team’s families and lives and they knew very little about mine but a great deal about what went on in my mouth. A cleaning usually took at least an hour. Fast forward to the new, younger dentist whose 12 year old assistant, after a quick introduction went to work instantly with some sort of hydraulic power washer that hurt like hell and sprayed me like the water slide at Knoebel’s. I put a stop to it instantly, telling her that it was most uncomfortable and this was not something I was willing to tolerate. She assured me I would get used to it and that cleanings would be a great deal quicker via this method. I assured her that I have all the time in the world and she commenced to scraping. Not a talker, this young woman got to work and hit every sensitive spot she could find. More than once. She’s learning I thought, she’s mapping my mouth, she’ll do better next time. She was finished in under 30 minutes and I have to admit my teeth were truly clean. That odd smell however, was my own sweat, fear and tension induced. I apologized and we parted but not before she told me she had made note of the sensitive spots and would indeed be more aware next time. When I made my follow up appointment I made sure that it was with her, to avoid another getting to know you session. 

So she had corroborated what I have always espoused. If you can, keep to the same team. The same woman has checked under my hood for the last fifteen or so years, I see the same technician at the mammogram shop, the same dermatologist annually. This way there is a history between you, about your most important assets. Changes and warning signs are noticed more quickly by those who know you. Our family physician saved the Captain’s life simply because he noticed something had changed and took steps to further investigate. In small communities I understand it’s a tricky balance, if you travel in hoity toity circles the risk of running into your gynecologist at a cocktail party is higher, “Hey there, have you done anything about those hemorrhoids yet?” Or as once honestly happened to me on a garden tour I said to the host “Gosh you look familiar to me but I can’t place why.” “Oh I do your mammogram every year.” was her reply then she said, “ You are very dense.” She meant my girls, not me personally! It is a balancing act, a litany of choices about taking your health care into your own hands, to the extent that the insurance companies will allow. I live in fear that we will be uprooted from this familiar line up of caregivers when we retire and have to switch service providers, that they will dictate whom we may see and that all this longstanding bodily communication will have to be re-built. 

With medical records software I see that being less of an issue, if only the caregivers were given enough time to read the details. In the meanwhile we must be vigilant, make sure we talk out loud about our fears, our allergies; some of which are life threatening and advocate for ourselves. "Remove growth on left buttock" pasted visibly on the correct appendage prior to surgery. We should write down the things that are important to us and then inform those we love as to the location of said statements. We created a Grim Reaper file, it contains statements about DNR specifics and end of life choices, it informs each of us, the Captain and I about what is important to us. In the interests of full disclosure, here I must admit that I don’t actually know where I put that file, it’s not lost, I just can’t find it!  I have put it away somewhere so safe, I may never see it again, but I digress. We have tried without success to share this information with our adult children as they are still in a place where the notion of our no longer being with them is in-conceivable. Plus they hate the name of the file. I intend to continue to be funny even as I approach the pearly gates or the place down under (I am not referring to Australia). In case we both leave this world or slip into comas concurrently the children won’t have to argue or wonder, or even think about what to do. Our last gift to them, one final set of instructions, perhaps taking away a smidgen of the pain over losing us. And also hopefully, preventing yet another sibling battle royale. 

Not that we have done it yet but the other nice thing we should do for the children is tidy up a bit. The basement and the garage continue to be places whose thresholds only the truly adventurous will venture to cross. The accumulated possessions of seven people who cannot throw anything away have risen to alarming proportions, the boxes, piles, heaps and tubs, the huge green trash bags, the padlocked plastic footlockers and the unused but still full furniture stashed in the basement and now also the garage are enough to deter even the minions of Martha Stewart, c’mon you know damn well she doesn’t do that shit herself! But we must. We must go in and winnow down to manageable levels, the crap we no longer need or use. The difficulty is that whilst I am thinking about this, the Captain’s parents are actually doing it, so almost every time we visit them now we come home with the stuff they no longer want. We’re going in the wrong direction here. They keep sending large envelopes full of old photos and framed pictures from their walls and their basement! We made good progress when we took out all the carpet and installed wood floors upstairs, we had to empty the closets in all the kids’ former bedrooms. I snapped photos with the mobile, sent them to the kids and said keep or toss. Almost everything had to be kept of course, so it went into boxes then down to the basement. I made impossible statements like this ”Okay we will keep this for one year and if you have not taken it by then it goes to Goodwill.”  Everyone just laughed at me. Nothing at all was jettisoned, but the closets are still empty and that makes me proud and also takes me one step closer to opening a Bed and Breakfast! Decades from now people may go through those boxes and find swimming trophies and school work, artwork and letters and they will spend hundreds of hours getting to know who we were, getting to know all about us. We’ll get there, so will you.