Usually we look forward to Fridays. But today we were looking forward to Friday for a different reason and looking forward to it with a little dread. My son had an appointment at 12:30 to finally get his cracked tooth pulled by the oral surgeon that my dentist sent us to see.

We got there a few minutes early – I strongly believe in being punctual. And sat in the patient waiting area for 30 long, tortuous minutes before a nurse came to the door and escorted my son back to the treatment room.

I was told to wait in the patient waiting room and that he would be about an hour. Well, they didn’t even have free Wi-Fi in their office, and I’m not one to sit for an hour and just stare at the wall. I don’t care how many thousands of dollars the oral surgeon’s decorator spent on the 4 pictures hanging on the walls of the waiting area. I’m not one to sit for an hour, so I left.

After an hour poking around a wonderful little wine shop, I headed back up to the oral surgeon’s office to collect my son, after they collected a sweet $800 from me for his services.

Although he is not home and sleeping, he will be in pain for another day or two, and we are out over $1,100 for a week’s worth of pain and aggravation, plus three trips downtown and eventually a missing tooth. No one has yet said what might be planned for replacing that tooth with a denture or something to hold that space, nor how much that is going to cost. The adventure continues next week.

Well people, this is getting to be a little crazy. My son needed his cracked tooth pulled and we drove downtown today for what we thought would finally be relief from the horrible pain he has suffered since last week.

But, no.

This “worked in” appointment was just a consultation. The oral surgeon evidently couldn’t take my regular dentist’s word for it that the cracked tooth needs to be pulled. He also couldn’t take my regular dentist’s xray – I was told it wasn’t good enough. So he took another xray and about 5 minutes of face time to tell us to come back on Friday to have it pulled. That means another two days of toothache and sleepless nights, and this little jaunt downtown cost us $201, not counting the four gallons of gas back and forth.

This morning I called our dentist and asked if they could see my son about his seriously cracked tooth that has kept him miserable all weekend. They said they would work him in if we came down right after lunch. So away we went at noon.

Although I appreciate their seeing him today, it cost me over $100 for the dentist to look in his mouth, take 1 xray (why an xray? I couldn’t tell you why that was needed when you can clearly see by eye that the crack goes all the way below the gum line.) and announce that his tooth is cracked and can’t be saved.

Now we have to go see an oral surgeon and the earliest he can be “worked in” is Wednesday afternoon. So two more days of miserable pain and then another trip downtown to get this tooth pulled.

This afternoon my son was eating a burger and evidently bit down on something like a little piece of bone or grizzel and ended up cracking his back tooth. He says he felt it crack and when he got home, he showed me his tooth and it was most certainly cracked – all the way down to or below the gum line. He says it hurts really bad, but here it is a Saturday and there’s no way to get him to a dentist today or tomorrow.

I wonder if there is any emergency dental care available anywhere in Nashville? You would think that a large city like Nashville would have some basic services available on weekends and late at night, to help the people who have problems outside of normal office hours.

For the time being, we went to Walgreens and bought some Oragel. I think we have a couple of pain pills stashed in the closet from an old prescription. I’ll have to dig through the dozens of  bottles and see what I can find to help him until Monday when we can hopefully get into our dentist’s office.

The only news this week seems to be centered on the huge partisan fight in Congress about the health care bill that Obama wants them to accept. It is a huge change for Americans and I realize that is was a big part of his campaign promising change. But I don’t know exactly what is in the bill and it seems nobody else knows, either.

I’ve heard very condescending quotes from various public figures that say after the bill is tweaked and approved that the public will be informed of what they decided was best for us. Now, if they truly are saying and thinking that, we have a very BIG problem with our elected officials in Washington. They are there to serve us – they are not there to decide in various back room deals what should be shoved down our throats.

This whole thing is very upsetting to me. I’m not convinced that Government run health care is the right way to handle this and I am concerned that Washington no longer cares what their constituents what. It’s turned into a huge political battle based on party lines. That is not in America’s best interest.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’ve been waiting an entire day for my cell phone to adjust the time display for Daylight Savings Time. I mean, when I fly across country, the cell phone adjusts for the time zones in real time. So here it is the second day after the Daylight Savings time setting and the time is still wrong on my cell phone. What’s up AT&T?

I love the way we are starting Daylight Savings early again this year. I wonder if it is a permanent thing now?

The easy way to remember how this works is to remember this little saying:

“Spring Forward and
Fall Back.”

Can’t you just make a mental image of springing forward, like in a race? And then to fall back, like that team building exercise where they tell you to close your eyes and let yourself fall backwards because you have to trust that your team mate is going to catch you. That’s what I think of when it comes to Daylight Savings time.