Dentures by 50

It is sunny and 50 degrees outside and I am slightly over-caffeinated. Also, it is quiet in my house. It's almost a perfect day. Almost so perfect that I do not want to dredge up the awful experience I had at the dentist this week.  But, I think I may have promised or something, so here it is.

It was your typical first time at a new dentist visit.  Paperwork, x-rays, and (this is a new one) digital photos of my smile and inside of my mouth. Things were going swimmingly.  Now enters the hygienist. She puts my x-rays on the monitor and I mentally prepare my history lesson for her: The Life and Times of Nikki's Mouth. But before I get a chance to talk, she throws me off guard by handing me a pair of protective eye wear.

My mind starts spinning. What are these for? Racing through the possibilities - is shrapnel going to be flying out of my mouth? Is the pressure too high on their water squirter thingy? Why could I possibly need these. I was so wrapped up in my own mental tailspin, that I barely heard the hygienist yapping away at me while pointing to my x-rays. But her last words were like a shotgun through the noise in my head "Next thing you know, you're in dentures by the time you're 50." WHAT!

My eyes bulged as she continued on about the importance of a mouth cancer screening. I just nodded in agreement. I was swishing some sort of liquid that shows cancerous cells under a blue light; all the while thinking about the Dentures at 50 comment. Rylee will still be in high school when I am 50. She won't want friends to spend the night for fear that I might come down for breakfast without my teeth in. Ahhhh! My eyes start to well up.

I was just blinking away the potential for real tears, when the hygienist announces that "Doc" will be in to examine my mouth shortly.  The dentist goes by Doc?  Just like my dad, my dad who was a dentist? Immediately I had visions of my father taking a short break from his golf game with The Lord God Himself, just to shake his head in disappointment.  I brace myself for the brow beating that is to come.

Now my eyes are closed, as just blinking isn't going to do the trick. I hear the dentist sit down next to me, so I collect myself and open my eyes. DOH. I am staring right at his nether regions. A little flustered, I dart my eyes around and see that my dentist is a tall, mole-less Enrique Iglesias. I get a little nervous now and start to giggle like Beavis. I think he asked me how I was doing. I think I just replied that I liked the protective eye wear.  He smiled nicely as said "We use so many sharp tools, that you can just never be cautious enough."  I start to envision the scraping tools poking out of my eyes and am thankful for the distraction from the dentures scenario.

The rest of the two day ordeal is somewhat of a blur, except the 36 times I have brushed and flossed since I left the office. Floss the ones you want to keep people. Floss the ones you want to keep.