AMENDMENT TO POLICY
As of today, all dental communication should be addressed to my husband.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
No further clarification will be provided.
That is because
I have vaporized. Crawled out of my own skin, vacated the premises, may no longer exist.
The child with the dental issues in question is in fact OK as far as we can tell but we did have to even out his hair a bit this morning,
since he took scissors to one side yesterday evening after the sedative, which the “dental professionals” assured us would GO INTO HIS MOUTH (friends, yes, we too were skeptical and said as much), instead went mostly into his hair and there hardened to a bed of plaster spikes over the course of his afternoon.
SEDATIVES DO NOT WORK WHEN APPLIED TO HAIR.
Children who can throw a frat party of a tantrum without any sedative in them can also throw a frat party of a tantrum with half a dose of heavy sedative in them.
Children who become homicidal when hungry are not good candidates for “nothing by mouth after midnight” protocol, which is functionally “nothing by mouth after 7:30pm” for a six-year-old.
I informed the dental professionals of #5 and #6 above, via phone and text, several times, in the weeks and days before we arrived, and then again, several times, while they were trying to get my child’s X-rays done by adding another member of their staff to his exam room every three to six minutes.
I asked if they had a blow-dart gun with tranquilizer.
They thought I was joking.
Once they obtained our signatures for the use of the sedative, they informed us it would take up to an hour to work.
The child, who starts burning things down after thirty minutes without a snack, was now on hour fifteen of the nothing-by-mouth protocol.
After the sedative was in him and/or in his hair, they put us in a dark room with a movie so “he could get calm and comfortable,” while we “waited for it to work.”
They anticipated that “within about a half an hour he will start to ask about taking a nap.”
At the half-hour mark, he was screaming at us to GO TO THE CAR AND GET REAL FOOD NOW.
I promised him really great food, all his favorites, which I had packed, just as soon as the people took care of his teeth.
Oh, they said, popping their heads into the dark “quiet” room, by the way, he can’t eat dairy or eggs for the rest of the day or he’ll throw up.
The items I had packed: Cheezits, kefir, chocolate milk, tuna salad with mayo.
They told us before they administered the sedative that there would be a nonrefundable fee of $475 whether it worked or not, and that all would depend upon his compliance.
We failed to notice that this was the stupidest proposal we’d ever heard because we were busy doing the stupidest thing we’d ever done,
namely, trying to keep a small person, who is 100% invested in patrolling and enforcing his bodily autonomy, seated in an uncomfortable dental office chair so that “horrible people who do horrible things” could do more horrible things to him.
When the most recent tech to try and help us in the dark waiting room left, trailing the vague hope that she was giving him “time to settle down,” around hour three of the proceedings,
I panther-stalked her around a corner and hissed THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK WHAT IS PLAN B
with my eyes shooting green sparks
and she said why yes there is a special plan B and that is that you pay for today and drive an hour home and come back and we put him under general anesthesia at a later date TBD after you’ve acquired medical clearance from another appointment with a separate professional which you’ll have to make and take him out of school for and pay for and send evidence of to us actually you can go ahead and just fax it isn’t that good news
AND for today you get to pay $789 for the sedative hair gel and illegible X-rays.
OK GREAT SOUNDS GOOD I SAID WE ARE OUT OF HERE
and I ran my card as if I were on fire
and I exited that building DOWN THE STAIRS BECAUSE ELEVATORS ARE TOO SLOW and I ejected what I am told was still ostensibly my body out into the street only to look around and find that
I had left my husband and son in the waiting room
so I called my husband and said where are you because I’m at the car I thought we were leaving and
he said into the phone in a quiet, concerned voice, “we are in the waiting room”
and I said COME OUT PLEASE and I hopped from foot to foot in the below-zero cold and it took a while for them to come out because they had to take the elevator with my illegally pedestrian child who was supposed to be riding in a wheelchair this whole time but the plasma ray of his outrage had reduced the wheelchair to a molten heap upon presentation so anyway they finally came out with him still wobbling and yanking his hand away from his father and we got in the car where the now-sixteen-hours-out-from-food-or-drink child was told
we had to follow a highlighted worksheet they’d given us called “Gatorade protocol”
—5ml every five minutes for fifteen minutes followed by 10ml every five minutes for twenty minutes followed by sips as tolerated for an hour followed by broth or toast for four hours followed by—
DRINK YOUR GATORADE I said to the blind-with-rage child now screaming for Cheezits
whereupon he chugged half the bottle and again yelled I WANT CHEEZITS
NOW
and I said, reading from the Gatorade Protocol sheet because my mind had gone completely blank by now, Tell me how your tummy did with the Gatorade
and he screamed GIVE
ME
CHEEZITS
NOW
and I said You have to start with bland foods like maybe this little bite of banana
which he took from me
and threw across the car
so we settled on the tuna since maybe there aren’t that many eggs in mayo
how many eggs are in mayo
he ate the can in two bites and said WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE
and I said well the only other non-dairy thing we have is cashews
whereupon he ate the tin of cashews
and I looked at my husband and said “I don’t think he’s having stomach issues”
and slowly we pieced together that the reason for this
was that there was no sedative to speak of
inside the child’s belly
and whatever had been there originally he’d burned through with the pyroclastic flow of his metabolism inside about ten minutes
and whatever had been left after those ten minutes of metabolic conflagration was
the precise amount necessary to make
the tantrums
memorable.
Again, all future dental correspondence should be directed to my husband.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
The vapor formerly known as Mom
In defense of spudling, cheez itz are pretty rockin’. We pick our battles early.
You are ALL HEROES in my book!!! This sounded worse than any fever dream I’ve ever conjured up.. holy Toledo. I’m so sorry for you all! To think that nothing even got accomplished is just the worst.
And Plan B??????