How to “insure” that your teeth are well-cared for

At my last visit, due to some confusion with our dental insurance, just as I was bibbed and “relaxed” in that scared-smile way in the chair, the receptionist urgently came in to inform me with the news that I didn’t have insurance coverage. Was I sure I wanted/needed the cleaning? Never before has it been so apparent to me that our care was optional, according to whether we had insurance for our care.

We did and do indeed have dental insurance, and I’m glad for it. Everything is cleared up now after only twelve or thirteen phone calls - sort of. I had to pay for the appointment up front, and after a mere two months, am still waiting to be reimbursed. Maybe I should make another phone call?

I often wonder what I might have accomplished in life if I didn’t have to always chase companies on the phone – waiting in the endless automated phone loops, waiting to catch a kinsman overseas who has been trained to put on an American accent, and who has been given an Anglicized pseudonym so you might actually believe that you are speaking to “Harry in Wichita” and not suspect that you are talking to Harrish in New Delhi. Perhaps I would have more time available, and would floss my teeth more.

At some point, you should just surrender and realize that you aren't going to beat the odds. Why is it that the beasts of the fields and the birds of the air don't even brush their teeth, but they don’t need to visit the dentist? Is it because they have generally healthier diets that lack refined sugar? How do they manage? Or do they just have horrible dental problems that they suffer in the wild, just because they don’t have dental insurance?

At an even earlier dental appointment, I once had declined the x-ray. The question was phrased in some way that asked me to confirm that I was not pregnant. I didn’t think I was pregnant. I didn’t think I should be, but since I couldn’t confidently rule it out, I simply declined the x-ray, and reclined in the chair. Shortly thereafter, I received lots of attention from numerous hygienists.

“Oh, congratulations…” each one said timidly as she poked her head in while I waited. They couldn't be congratulating me on my teeth; that much I knew. On the first remarks, I gave them a questioning look. “Oh...you refuse x-ray,” they said knowingly, wink, wink. So much for all those privacy forms you fill out.

I had to convince them that I was pretty sure there was no need for congratulations. Then, they looked at my teeth. That confirmed it.

Why do they really wear those face shields? Is it to guard themselves from your back-spray, or is it so you can't inspect the quality of their teeth while they are fiddling with yours? Why do the hygienists insist on ask complicated questions as you sit mouth agape, hoping not to drool on your bib dangling from alligator clips? They should be trained to deliver a soliloquy instead. The questions are never the yes/no type, either. “It's, ‘Where are you from?’ ” Even with my mouth free, that question for immigrant-types can require a mouth-full.

If my gums bleed in various areas, they definitely start asking how often I've been flossing. Why don't they just ask “if” I've been flossing? Rather than asking your cosmetic opinions of your teeth, they should force you to divulge your dental history, excluding the week before you're scheduled to be there. That's the one week where everyone is a good and frenzied dental patient. Like a non-custodial parent, we are desperate to squeeze in all the love and attention we can get into a weekend or a holiday.

This is bad, but I'm always tempted to lie about the flossing. Not that it would fool anyone, but there is that streak of sarcasm that I usually reserve for my kids or this column that threatens to well up. “No, I floss all the time,” I want to say. “My gums are bleeding because they are shy and a little sensitive – especially in the presence of strangers with face shields.” I don’t want to tell her, as her face looms directly over mine, that I was so lazy last night that I slept in my contact lenses.

“You need to floss more...” the hygienist chides over and over. Okay. I get that. I'm getting that now, and I will be terrified enough to do so religiously for the next week.

Do I sound like this when I am nagging my kids? I leave the office, and people are left wondering whether I am expecting Baby #7. (I’m not.) I am wondering whether I can start flossing fanatically and stop nagging the kids. I’ll work on both…right after I call the insurance company. Again.

Flying to India on "Groundhog Day"

Tomorrow my husband is flying out to India. Again. It’s going to feel like Groundhog Day in the Bill Murray movie of the same name. You know, the one in which “Phil” keeps waking up to the same day, over and over again, and his lousy day keeps repeating in excruciating detail?

It will feel like Groundhog Day, because this morning, already, my husband was supposed to be flying to India. Except he didn’t make it off the ground, so we are going to have to repeat the process tomorrow, and go into a holding pattern at the airport, checking and reconfirming and circling about like a vulture trying to swoop onto any leftover seats. At the rate things are going, my husband, who previously had me carefully select his seats so that they were conveniently located in the aisle or in the bulkhead, is now willing to take any seat available, including one that might have a hole in it.

If I had any sense, I wouldn’t be telling you any of this, because Warrenton is getting to be a little dangerous, and I’m sure all the criminal types are reading this paper. Except for you, of course. Husband-less, I present a vulnerable image, I guess, even though half of my kids are taller than I am. Plus, we have that fierce watchdog from the shelter named Betty Lou. (Doesn’t her name convey the ferocious Southern belle that she is? This dog could lick you to death.)

I have to tell you this because I need to blame someone for this lost flying day. Of course, we shouldn’t pick on United Airlines who canceled the flight from Dulles to O’Hare without mentioning a word to us. That would be too obvious. The airlines claimed they had no way to contact us and tell us the airplane had mechanical problems. Couldn’t contact us? Could not contact us? I’ll bet if we owed them ten cents, they would have figured out how to contact our grandparents, our children’s teachers, and us. Then, they would have flown a plane over to come collect the dime.

I know it was really my fault; I should have checked the flight status before leaving for the airport. Instead, we called and checked en route, and learned just as we merged onto I-66 that the flight was cancelled and he was booked on the same flight, one day later. What about today’s flight to India? “No problem,” the agent said as she booked him on a flight out of DC. We drove directly to the Reagan National Airport so my husband could catch a different connecting flight. We got there, but there was more confusion and no flight.

When that failed, they tried yet another connecting flight which also failed. About the time someone piped up the bright idea that he drive to Dulles to try to get an an even later and riskier flight, he called me. I turned around to go bring him back from the Reagan Airport.

I know I’m probably at fault, but finding someone else to blame is ever so much more satisfying. Who didn’t pray enough before the flight? Nothing seemed to go right today. Do you ever have those days? No fair lumping every Monday into that category.

This morning my husband awoke early as usual, but when his time in the bathtub turned into an unplanned polar plunge, he made official what the rest of us had vaguely suspected yesterday: there was no hot water in the house. We had all blamed someone or something else for our tepid showers. But this morning he made it official: there was no hot water, and there was no other soul or device hogging it all. So we were crouched down together in the basement. Our romantic ambience was provided by the pilot light that he had just taught me to light on the hot water heater.

Then, just so I wouldn’t be completely stranded, he went over the finer points of our home computer network. I’m not going to tell you how many computers we have, not because I’m afraid you’ll think less of me if I have more than you do, but because I don’t know unless I stop to count. And certainly, you don’t expect me to stop writing and check up on the facts, do you?

My husband has our house computer-networked in a way that would put many a small business to shame. We found a glitch this morning that would have converted our printer/scanner into a gigantic table decoration for the next couple of weeks, had he not worked to troubleshoot the problem and fix it.

Without our printer for two weeks, we would have been in a bind. And without hot water, we would have been in hot water. I needed a reminder how much I depend on this man, even though I admit this grudgingly.

We just confirmed that he has a seat on tomorrow’s flights, and the seat doesn’t have a hole in it. Let’s hope that the plans don’t either.