Dentistry and Destiny

My grandfather slid his upper teeth out of his mouth before my wondering eyes. “Can you do that?” he challenged. I pushed against the inside of my front teeth with my tongue, but nothing moved. I tried again with small thumbs, one on each side of my front teeth, trying to mimic his talent. He laughed, saying “Someday, you will.”

Grandmother’s teeth sat silently in a glass of water on the nightstand while she was napping. I never saw her put them in or take them out. Unlike Grandpa, she was not amused by their portability. She fussed that they didn’t feel right and food didn’t taste the same. At the time, I thought she was just being picky, but I have since come to know that food does taste different from fingers or forks, so maybe it wasn’t all in her head.

All old people had dentures when I was young. One cousin had all of her teeth pulled and was fitted for dentures when she was newly married. The family decided she had a bad case of soft teeth. In my family, some people had soft teeth, which needed fillings, and others had hard teeth. It was not due to brushing. It would not have been due to flossing because we had never heard of that. No, it was not her fault that she was born with soft teeth.

Later, when I was in my late twenties, I worked briefly in a very small town’s even smaller library. A local woman had been the high school librarian and was trained in library science. She assigned numbers to all the new books that determined their place on the shelves. On one of her stops, she said she had come from the dentist. They were trying to save one of her teeth – a molar, I believe. To myself, I wondered why? Surely, they would all go in time and she had to be 80 years old already.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had fillings in all of my permanent molars on both sides before I was out of high school. Annual visits to the dentist consisted of determining which cavities needed filling. Beyond that, dental care consisted of removing teeth as quickly and painlessly as possible and fitting dentures. Imagine my surprise when I came due for an intermediate round of dental care. Around thirty, the fillings somehow caused the need for root canals and then caps on all of the molars. That was painful and expensive. Dental insurance was not common and I had none.

I also didn’t like any of the dentists I encountered with each episode of swollen jaw. One time, I went in for what I thought would be an annual cleaning (which existed by then). The dentist said I needed a root canal and began prepping while my mouth was still blocked open, without asking if this was a good time or if I could afford it or if I had taken more than an hour off work. Each root canal was done by a different dentist because I never went back to the same one twice.

By the time we moved to Hawai‘i, I was the age that my grandparents were when they got dentures. But advances in modern dentistry meant my refurbished teeth were doing ok. I still hadn’t found a dentist I liked and didn’t really expect to. So, when scheduling an annual cleaning, I looked for female dentists. I always look for female health providers because that wasn’t an option for the first half of my life. I rushed into the office for the appointment, late because I didn’t know the area yet and hadn’t been able to find the building. I had already checked in before I noticed that I was surrounded by toys and games and very low furniture. The lobby television showed cartoons rather than news or weather.

The office staff found it very amusing that I chose a pediatric practice. I told them it’s because I’m like a little kid when it comes to people messing with my mouth and I was scarred from prior encounters. The dentist also was amused but happy to play along. By the time of my third appointment, her business cards included the tag line “for children of all ages.”

The regular appointment reminder came when I was at work on a Friday, still a phone call then rather than text. I confirmed for Saturday afternoon. About an hour later, I got another call from the office saying that doctor had an emergency and all appointments were canceled. They would contact me to reschedule. I agreed, it was only the annual cleaning, nothing concerning.

The news that evening told of a child who had died during an appointment with my dentist. She was about the age I had been when trying to mimic Grandpa’s trick teeth. The death of a child took place in the same chair where I had finally found comfort.