Pour Some Sugar On...My Teeth

I really hate the dentist.  Not the dentist himself, but the whole idea of the dentist.  I strongly believe it is a form of legal torture.  Yet I submit myself to the pain every 6 months for my pearly white whitish teeth.  Bad teeth genes kind of run in my family so it's no surprise the dentist finds at least one cavity during each visit.  Once he found 14.  But let's not get into that right now.

Last week I noticed what looked to be a black spot on one of my back molars.  I, of course, freaked out.  I figured my tooth was rotting.  I called my mom near tears.  I called my dad and blamed him for procreating.  He, in turn, made jokes about me trying to fit in with my toothless employees.  I harassed my friends over GChat with disturbing mental images of my decaying tooth.  I made promises to myself to floss 4 times a day for the rest of my life.  To never drink another soda.  To cut sugar completely out of my diet.  To never drink another beer (bahahaha).  Then I called the dentist.

My appointment was set for this past Friday at 4 pm.  I had a little more than 48 hours to go.  I couldn't stop thinking about how much my tooth was rotting with each passing second and I made sure whoever I was talking to at the time was thinking about it too.  I checked it every hour in the bathroom mirror.  I received a call Friday around lunch that the dentist was very ill and had gone home for the day and she needed to reschedule me for Tuesday at 11:30 am.  Cue my emotional breakdown over the phone with the receptionist.  DON'T YOU GET IT?  MY TOOTH WILL BE GONE BY THEN!  And then I thought that maybe if my tooth did fall out, I could sue.  And then I would be rich enough to get new, perfect non-rotting teeth!

Today I went to my appointment.  I drove over 30 minutes to get there.  I was very nervous the entire time.  I kept thinking about how the dentist had told me in March to make sure to floss everyday.  And how I flossed like once...in 6 months.  When I checked in, the receptionist told me that my insurance wasn't covering today's appointment and that it would be $50 plus 20% of any service the dentist needed to perform.  Dollar signs bounced around my head.  What does a rotting tooth cost these days?  I settled back in the chair and showed him the problem.  It took him, oh, about 3.7 seconds to tell me that what I was seeing was just a small reflection of an old filling I had between my teeth.  It was casting a small shadow on my tooth.  My tooth is fine. 

Huh.

He said he appreciated my proactive attitude about my oral health and said he wouldn't even tell the insurance company I was here today.  Instead he will charge it to them in September when I come back for my cleaning.  I'm not sure exactly what 3.7 seconds of scanning my mouth costs but I'm glad I'm not the one paying for it. 

Oh, and then I went to Quiznos which made it all worth it.

In conclusion?  Screw flossing.  Hand me a beer.  My teeth are badass.