DENTAL FUCKING TERROR

Why does it have to be so excruciatingly hard to speak up, ask questions, expect respect? Is it really just a muscle that hasn’t been worked— assertiveness? I can fight for my kids, but for me? Forget it.

Is it a part smashed that can never be healed or put back together again, like Humpty-Dumpty? I know what was taken was taken for good… trust, and innocence. But in addition, my voice. I just cannot speak up for myself.

I was taught not to. That lesson eviscerated my spiritual soul, especially when I am vulnerable. Lying back in a dentist’s chair, I am a little girl. I’m being hovered over and abused.

I am meek, scared, hurt and quiet. The repressed memory of a rape that I know occurred, but my subconscious won’t allow memory of, swims below ready to strike like a pool of piranhas.

And others take advantage, even my beloved periodontist. I relay to her that Dr. John said only, “Have ‘her’ take care of it.”

And that’s all he said, not even looking at me as if I existed. He does not explain why he put medication under my gum line. And that was only after finally figuring out why I complained of pain after the last three dental cleanings over the past year. He just says to my hygienist, “Have her take of it.”

Indicating that I go to my periodontist, that is if I were able to read his mind. After the medication wears off a few months later, I do go. Dr. John never explained how soon to see my periodontist after the medication was implanted, nothing. And when I make the appointment, I asked if he sent along the most recent x-rays. He didn’t.

When Dr. Julie, my periodontist, examined me, I relay that Dr. John saw a crack. So she breezily says, “You’ll need gum surgery and I’ll place a graft in there. I’ll also have you sign a release to extract the tooth if needed, but I don’t think it’s that.”

Just like that. I am mute. I go home. And I cry. Dr. John never even sent her a note as to why he referred me there. So when I relay what he said about a crack, Dr. Julie had me sign a release to pull it if she has to. And I did like an obedient child, though something in me was clawing in opposition.

Pull it? Do you not know how fucking hard it is to lie there as you cut me apart, or drill, or whatever fucking whatever? Now you casually say, “And I’ll pull it if need be.” Fuck, what?

But I am mute. And I suffer, and cry, and talk to Samuel who doesn’t know what to say. And if anything seems to make matters worse by suggesting that maybe Dr. John thought I was too medicated to understand.

That only makes me furious with Samuel, “I take Xanax for cleanings at this new place only because the hygienist is so hyper it makes me hyper. I am not a nut case. When I take it, it only calms me to a place you and others are already at. It doesn’t make me loopy. It just calms my nervous system that has launched into the stratosphere. You’ve known me all this time. You know it doesn’t change me. Only when I take a whopping dose to have medical procedures or more complex dental work! How can you say that!”

I give up on him disgusted with his ignorance, and his inability to understand or even try to. The emotions diffuse like melting ice or a cooling volcano as I back away. I need a therapist. I need support.

I cry on the phone to my son on his way to work, even though everything in me tells me not to. He gets to the door of his building in the city with a crying Mother on his hands, and we say good-bye. Now I have to deal with that guilt all day.

But his calm ways, and wise words spur me to call the dentist whose office happens to be closed on Fridays. But I keep at it and call the periodontist.

“Hi, it’s Tracy,” she says.

“Hi Tracy, this is Patricia. I hoped to talk to Dr. Julie Tuesday keeping the phone with me all day in case she called.” I said.

“Oh, I’d give you her cell phone number but she’s at the other office today and she is extremely busy there. Can I help you?” she responds, and her voice sounds as if she means it.

I breathe some relief in and pour out my heart. Between sobs she says, “Take a breath.”

And I do. Then she explains what is going on in my mouth because no one has explained it at all.  

I keep thinking all this is on me. Because I don’t ask questions, they hide in my head, my voice mute. And I’m sure my eyes are full of fear. Maybe that makes them both not talk to me. But I’m not buying it. No matter how scared I am, or how young I might act, it is up to you to explain things to me anyway. 

So Dr. Julie did finally talk to Dr. John and the crack isn’t the tooth but a small crack in a filling on the neighboring tooth. No release for a possible extraction was needed at all which added to my terror ten-fold, terror upon terror. All that could have been avoided if Dr. Fucking John had simply done his job by sending a short note.

My beloved Dr. Julie should have spoken with him first before so easily asking me to sign a release for an extraction, as if it happens every day. It may in her world, but never mine. Losing a body part, even a tooth, would have caused months of emotional pain and loss afterwards. She based it solely on my passing on what I overheard him saying about a crack. A crack that he never bothered to explain to me was in a filling, not a tooth.

He hasn’t the time to talk. With sweat on his brow as his hurriedly does examinations after each cleaning, it’s easy to see he just wants to return to the patient he was working on. That adds to my hesitancy to ask questions. 

So she did what was easiest for her rather than checking with him first. Do I have DOORMAT stapled on my forehead? Often I think I do. I give off this false niceness implanted into me, like a captured prisoner who leans on her captors loving them. The signs shouts, DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. I WILL SMILE AND THANK YOU FOR IT. 

I did say to her, “I don’t know what tooth he was talking about. You’d have to talk to him.”

And she should have. I could have insisted, but who would think they have to tell their specialist to confer with the referring doctor? That is not my job. That is THEIR  fucking job. Dam, fucking, dam. 

How can so much bad care be given to just one person? I need to speak up! Yet I know that when I am vulnerable, in pain, and in that position, that I won’t. I cannot. It is only afterwards at home that the big person comes out to protect little Patricia, because I am all child in that chair.