August in Review

​First, I received both jury duty and a subpoena in the same week.  What are the odds?   At least now I am jury duty free for another year.

Then I encountered an older woman who demanded everything to be done for her free of charge, because it was a complimentary consultation appointment; not to mention that her son was a dentist in Spain.   Then she got upset about not getting antibiotics for a decayed, not infected, tooth.   She wanted all the diagnoses to be done during this consultation appointment.  What was supposed to be a 20 minutes appointment lasted an hour plus.  To top it off, she threatened my receptionist. Crazy?  Check.

Then for some reasons, both my daughter and I broke out in hives over one weekend.  Our lips swelled, bodies attacked with lumps and bumps in all the wrong places.  Not a pretty sight.  Even with that, my daughter showed up for ballet class.  What a trooper!

The following weekend, I volunteered for CDA Cares in Sacramento, CA.  There were over two hundred dental professionals and community volunteers serving over 2200 patients in one weekend.

That’s me in front of the registration desk.  There were at least 834 people registered by 9am Saturday morning.

​My job was to numb patients before they receive treatment.  One lady complained that I didn’t anesthetize her upper teeth because she didn’t feel anything.  I asked her to pinch her lip to see if she had any feeling.  She said no.  “Yes, ma’am, that’s our point.”  Then another lady yelled at the dentist next to me because she was waiting for so long, which was about 3 minutes.  Thankfully, the big guys came to intervene before it got ugly.  Of course with all big events, there would be some unexpected commotions. But the majority of the patients were grateful and appreciative.  My best compliment came from a guy who said, “You give the best shots in the world!”  That felt good because it made me feel like my work mattered.  And it did.

​Towards the end of the month, yours truly celebrated a landmark birthday; let’s just say 30th plus some, for the sake of argument.  I was so touched by the outpour of love from my patients.  I love how you guys know I’m such a foodie.  I guess talking about food all the time gives it away.  But so much love returned was a wonderful feeling.

Finally, after being prodded and probed in so many places, I got a clean bill of health from my doctors.  I did the “scratch” test for allergies, 112 scratches total. Let me tell you, those were not scratches.  I don’t know where they got that description.  But only two reacted positively but even those were so minimal.  My back looked like a complicated tic-tac-toe grid.  I got blood drawn for diabetes, weight measured and all that.  After a year of being on a doctor's watch for my health issues relating to pregnancy, they concluded I was at an IDEAL weight for my height.  So to celebrate, I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet the very next day.  It’s good to be eating without restrictions again.  Woo-hoo! (Heels clicking in mid-air).