D is for Dentist or Dammit or Doh or Dagnabbit...

Today was D day.

(wherein the D would stand for dentist).

Let me start over.  Today was dentist day.  Yes the day has come when Mason had to get his very first filling.  Because he is so young and never had a filling before the dentist decided to send us to a special pediatric dentist at the hospital (read: ka-ching).  The problem with the pediatric dentist was that they wanted payment in full.  $400 today and $400 next Tuesday when he would have to go back.  Just not in my budget to hand over $800 in one week.  In fact, that may never happen.  Ever. 

So I told the dentist this, they said fine let your kid's teeth fall out, or something along those lines, maybe they were a bit nicer, but I totally heard it as let those teeth rot and you're a bad person and a terrible mother.  When that appointment was approaching I decided to call them to make sure the appointment was in fact cancelled so I didn't get charged a cancellation fee, at which point I found out it was not.  So I got angry and told them to destroy our file. 

Long story short, they called back and said they would bill my insurance company direction (read: woohoo I won!) and that I would just pay the difference up front when I went in.  That was no problem.  So today I went in there with my adorable little Anne Geddes baby cheque all written up ready for them to take and they were all like whoa, we don't take cheques here.  Cash only.  Great.  So I felt like a piece of shit (thanks for mentioning the no cheque thing on the phone).  I was just so used to my dentist taking cheques that I didn't even think they wouldn't. Are cheques not accepted anywhere anymore? Do people even still use cheques? Gahh!

So the woman got all huffy and told me that I would have to come in to pay tomorrow morning when they open (my boss is going to loooove me tomorrow).  Then we waited in a room with no toys (H1N1 protocols, take the toys away in the waiting room) for an hour.  We watched as people who came after us got in to the room, four people to be exact.  I felt like I was being punished for being cash-less.  Finally they called us back, and Mason was given a shot glass of some wonky medicine that makes you drunk so you don't freak out when they start drilling your face.

Then we were instructed to go back to the waiting room and wait 20 minutes for the medication to kick in.  I figured I would let him play with his Transformer for a few minutes before I settled my drunken kid down.  He sat on the floor and rolled the car across the floor once and took a face plant into the ground.  I scooped him up and held him like a baby (which was hard to do with a 60 pound kid!) and he looked like he was completely drunk.  He started telling knock knock jokes and laughing hysterically as he repeated "banana" over and over again. 

The other people in the waiting room thought it was hilarious, I started to worry that I should have brought somebody with me because this was more serious than it sounded.  The nurse brought in a wheelchair to roll him back to the dentist chair where he was greeted by the nice dentist man.  He then freaked out when he saw a toy snake wrapped around the dentist's light.  I just held his hand as they gave him a big huge needle (have you seen the size of those things??) and then suddenly holding onto his hand gently turned into having to hold his arms down to prevent him from punching the dentist in the face.

My child who only 5 minutes earlier was laughing at his own knock knock jokes was now in a rage about being at the dentist.  He turned from comedian to that girl from The Exorcist. He was screaming I HATE YOU to the dentist, which I had never heard him say to anybody.  The one nurse that had came in to assist (there were four of us) mouthed "he said I hate you" to the other nurse.  Which also made me feel like a piece of shit mother.

As if I didn't feel bad enough that he has cavities, as if I didn't feel bad enough that I am a single mother on a single income and that I had to make arrangements to be there in the first place, now I have bitches commenting on his behaviour. He was terrified and heavily medicated, that was NOT my son.  He was confused and had four people pinning him down to a chair while someone drilled into his mouth, he's not going to be cracking jokes about bananas and have butterflies and rainbows shooting out of his ass at that point. 

And then it was over.

The dentist took probably 10 minutes to give him the tiniest filling I have ever seen in my whole entire life.  When I go to the dentist and I get a filling it takes hours, so this guy is good at what he does. The unfortunate thing is that his staff are all not very nice, but he is the nicest, most genuine dentist there is. 

I put my dopey kid back into the wheelchair.  Which he then threw a fit again because he thought he had to be in a wheelchair forever after that.  Then the dentist dropped the bombshell.  The other teeth will be fixed under general anesthesia because Mason is just too strong for him and he feels he can't do a good enough job with him thrashing about like that.

As I had him ready to go, the receptionist (who was mean earlier) apologized and said that the drink they gave him was not covered under my benefits plan and that I have to bring in an extra $85 tomorrow.  She said she was sorry and that she knew what it was like to be a single mother so she understood what I was going through.

I always wonder how other single mothers can understand though.  My relationship with Mason's father didn't end, he died.  I don't get financial support from a spouse, he's dead.  I make all the decisions myself, I go through shit like this myself and I feel sorry for my son, by myself.  If she understood, maybe she wouldn't have been so mean in the first place.  I try so hard to do things normally, if I would have had the $800 to give them, I would have given it to them gladly and waited for the benefits cheque to come in, but the thing is I don't.

I'm just feeling sorry for myself, wondering when things, or if things, are ever going to get better.  I'm tired of having to ask people for help, whether it be financial or even just watching Mason for a night so I can go out with friends.  I'm just tired.

It's just a game of two steps forward three steps back lately and it's starting to take it's toll on me now.



and because I hate to leave things so gloomy,  I have a cute story to share:

The dental hygienist instructed me to bring Mason home and lay him on the couch so he didn't hurt himself falling or anything while on the drug.  So we were in the washroom just after the drug was given to him and he turned to me and said "Mom, you know what the tooth fairy told you? You have to let me watch kids shows on the couch".  He thought she was the tooth fairy.  I probably should have told her that, it was too cute!

Moral of this post:  Don't let your kids skip flossing!