In early August, The Redhead and I visited a pediatric dentist. We had a pediatric dentist once. He was in Kansas and we loved him. He was also an orthodontist, and it was rather convenient to have your dentist know so much about your teeth as well as how to fix them. He had devised a strategy and she was going to get braces late into the summer of 2013. But then we moved. And well, that sort of put a damper on that.
It took me a year to finally take her to a dentist, which isn't something I'm proud of.
It's hard changing doctors and dentists. It's even harder when you move across the country and have no choice. It's even harder when you finally find a pediatrician, but you're not crazy about them. Of course, I'm not sure it's entirely their fault. We picked out our former pediatrician when The Redhead was still in utero. We loved her. She could answer our questions honestly and we trusted her without any hesitation. I realize this attachment was only going to make it more difficult finding a new pediatrician. And since our former dentist came to us by recommendation of our former pediatrician, well, you can only imagine that attachment as well.
Mister Man only took The Redhead once to our old dentist. She was in tears one morning telling me something had happened the day before during the after school program she attended. Her face had a worried expression and tears were welling up in her eyes. She kept saying something about her friend Z and something happening to her and how she was afraid she was in trouble. I kept thinking she had hurt Z or something like that. Instead, her pal was down and when she tried standing up, her head hit The Redhead's chin, which then caused The Redhead to chip a front tooth. Considering my initial fears, this was a better alternative. I had to work, so Mister Man took her to her appointment. They briefly checked her tooth, it was fine, and then they applied a sealant onto other permanent teeth that had recently come in. He wasn't impressed by this, apparently. But he had never been there during an actual appointment.
Now if you made it through all of that back story and nonsense, well, I applaud you. And now we are back to The Redhead visiting the dentist on Californian soil. We didn't have a lot of luck finding a dentist like we once had. Instead, we found many different pediatric dentist chains. So, so many. We picked Make a Smile. We're not really sure why, but that's the one we picked, going to the location closest to us. This was a scary decision for me, one that was so scary, I had put it off this long. And I have an obsession with teeth. And a real concern. So that's how I know I must have been really scared. I never would have put off The Redhead's cleaning otherwise.
For a child who hadn't had her teeth cleaned in almost eighteen months, her teeth were immaculate. I'm going to knock on my desk as I report to you that she has never had a cavity, and still hasn't. I once thought she had at age two and that I was a terrible mother, thinking that the entire day, until by that evening, I realized she had stolen a Junior Mint. That's all it was. And she won't even eat them now, because she claims she doesn't like mints. Anyway, the dental hygienist was impressed by the state of her pearly whites. He couldn't believe how well she brushes and flosses, a routine she started as a toddler. Yes, I'm serious.
We really liked that dental hygienist. Then the dentist came, at least the dentist that was there that day. Apparently they have a rotation of dentists. And orthodontists. The dental hygienist had planned on staying and assisting the dentist, but another girl sent him away and told him to do something else. She never introduced herself to us. She just sat down. This isn't nice, but the only impression I had of her was that she was kissing the dentist's rear. Then they went straight to analyzing The Redhead's teeth.
As they took down notes and consulted with one another, The Redhead started to get concerned. They had something to whisper with every tooth, so she had the impression there was something severely wrong with her whole mouth. She attempted to ask a few questions, but they both ignored her. Now, my child is inquisitive, like a lot of kids are, I'm sure. She's been obsessed with doctors since she was barely walking. She has asked them questions when she could barely talk. Up to this point, they have always answered her. These two? They had no interest in talking to her. And she started to panic. The child who loves going to the dentist and thinks of it as a trip to the spa was starting to have anxiety. As a mother, this bothers me. And if I hadn't been so insecure, I would've called them out for it. But that's not my style; however, it should have been.
While, I wasn't exactly comfortable there that day, between the dentist and the assistant, there was a lady and her teenage daughter beside us, complaining, wondering why they were helping The Redhead first. They had arrived thirty minutes after us, but were helped before us because we had been setting up paperwork. So I get they probably thought their turn would be before us. It wasn't. They were getting restless, which was making me restless. I shouldn't have let that bother me, but I did. Perhaps it would have helped if we had been in separate rooms. But we weren't. It was just a big open area with six dental chairs.
I took two things from that experience that day. One, The Redhead's canine teeth were coming in horizontally, but we would have to wait until we could get into their orthodontist to know what to do about that. The dentist didn't have any ideas, except a facial expression showing how serious this was. But her face was fairly serious looking to begin with. The other thing I took from this day was that I had managed to take my child to a Great Clips for teeth. Now, Mister Man rather enjoyed my analogy. He doesn't always enjoy my analogies, like how I often use Auschwitz in many misguided and inappropriate moments. But this time, he agreed.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mean that this dental place was cheap. But it's a chain. It has a rotating staff. Staged routine. Impersonal. Corporate. And storefront. Perhaps lacking certain courtesy, professionalism, and even liability. It's like going to the Retail Giant when you meant to go to the Farmer's Market. And while you may even pay the same, you're certainly not getting the experience you wanted.
Only a month and a half after visiting The Great Clips of Dentists, we had a consultation with another dentist today. She's also an orthodontist, much like our former dentist/orthodontist. She is approximately thirty minutes away from us, but our dentist in Kansas was forty five minutes or more. The Redhead will be getting braces, and because of this, I don't want to take my precious child and her teeth just anywhere. We needed to make sure this was a right fit. We needed someone we could trust. After meeting her, we thought we finally found someone who could help answer any and all questions about these horizontal teeth.
Except there was one minor problem.
The Redhead doesn't have horizontal canine teeth. And never did. But she can help us with everything else. And luckily we now know everything we needed to know about that dental chain.
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