3 Days, 3 Appointments

I'm not a big fan of the dentist. Never really have been. And Ben's been after me for a while to call and set up an appointment to just to just go in for a routine checkup/cleaning. I'll admit, it's been about 2 years since the last time I saw a dentist. That's how much I dislike it. And it didn't help that while we were at Irwin I had to go off post for the dentist. Here I can go to the clinic on post. Anyway, I finally gave into my husband and called Thursday to set up my appointment. Lo and behold they had an opening for the next day. So I go in Friday and it ends up just being filling out some paper work, doing some xrays, and the dentist taking a look at my teeth. So nothing serious. They don't do the cleaning or anything Friday though. I have to set up another appointment for that. We talk for a little bit, he gives me a slip of paper saying I need to set up these other appointments (I needed to get an old filling replaced too), and I head up to the front desk. Apparently things are pretty slow at the dental clinic because the receptionist was like "how about 730 Monday morning?" So I accepted that one, only to have to go change it later. Ben had failed to tell me about a pre-deployment briefing that I was supposed to go to with him Monday morning. So while out running other errands Friday afternoon, I stopped back in and changed it. Guess what, they had an opening for Monday afternoon instead. Come Monday I was back in the chair, this time getting my teeth cleaned. Still not my favorite thing, but I survived. After that was over, I received another slip of paper saying I need to schedule another appointment to get my filling replaced. I bet you can't guess when that one was set up for! Again I made my way down to the dental clinic this morning. I'm sure they are getting tired of seeing me by now. I know I'm getting tired of seeing them. Pretty much as soon as I walked in the door and checked in they were ready for me. They didn't waste any time getting me back there. It would have been nice to have a minute to catch my breath since we still don't have a car and I had to walk down, but it was all good. I was able to do that while they got everything set up. My dentist is a nice guy. He's a bit older and has been doing his job for a while. Doesn't mean that I like what he does though. But he does do it well. He didn't waste anytime getting me numbed up. I can't remember what he used, but it's a newer anesthetic. It works great! Granted he could have used a little more. He said he only used about half a dose, so I still felt some of the drilling, but nothing too terrible. The whole process didn't take too long, and afterwards they did another xray. This time they did the panoramic one to see how my wisdom teeth look. They had to do it twice because the gal who was doing it for me didn't have something set quite right or something so the xray machine got caught on my lead vest. So they fixed everything and did it again. It worked that time. The dentist was in with another patient at the time so I had a seat in the waiting room while he finished up. He came out a short time later and we went over the xray. Guess what, I get to go back to the dentist to get my wisdom teeth out. It won't be here though. I'll have to go down to the air force hospital where Ben had his surgery to see the oral surgeon there. So I'm not sure when that will happen. My dentist here is going to look into it and give me a call. We don't know how the whole referral process works, if he sets it up or if I do. We're going to push to get it done before Ben deploys though. And since we don't know exactly when that will be, the sooner I can get it done the better. I'll keep you updated on that though. I'm looking forward to my husband taking care of me for a little bit the way that I've been taking care of him for the past little while. It will be a nice change. =)
Speaking of taking care of my husband... He's hanging in there. The smallpox vaccine has just wiped him out. He was saying that it hit him a lot harder than a lot of the guys at work. It's starting to get better though. Slower than he would like, but still better nonetheless. His shoulder is getting better too. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but for about the past month and a half or so he's had problems with his arm going numb. He talked to the dr about it last time we were there and Ben got a referral to go see the neurologist. He got that appointment set up today, and we head to the Naval hospital Monday. There we'll see if we can figure out why his arm and hand have been going numb. It's possible it could have happened during the shoulder surgery, but we don't know anything right now. So that's something else to keep everyone updated on. I guess that's one way to see Japan though. Having to travel everywhere for various dr appts. I won't complain too much though. It gives me a reason to get off post and out of the house, and to spend some time with my honey before he leaves for a while. Right now I'll take whatever time I can get. =)