Traumatic Tuesday

You know, some days are just better than others. Today wasn't one of them!! I started out with visiting a lab to have blood drawn (something I'd been putting off for three months!), and ended it with a visit to the dentist and cleaning courtesy of Attila the Hun!!

I'm a total needle-phobe - when the lab tech asked which arm I preferred, I said "Yours!!" She thought I was joking! The giant rubber band was pinching the skin on my arm and she had to have taken at least 20 little test tubes full of blood! It's amazing that I could even walk out of there. (Okay, maybe a little exaggeration......)

As for dentists, from my perspective they are all versions of Orin, the dentist from Little Shop of Horrors - "You'll be a dentist, you have a talent for causing men pain...." I truly don't like going to dental offices - all those boring magazines, the classical music (guess that's suppose to relax me!), the funny smell, the sharp instruments, the sounds of people in the back moaning (and not in a good way). Using a jackhammer to clean my teeth, an ice pick to finish the job. And what ever happened to swish and spit?!? Now they use a suction thing which got stuck to the side of my mouth and damn near turned my mouth inside out when the hygienist removed it!

Oh, yes, my son will soon be marrying a dental hygienist!!! For Christmas I get floss for stocking stuffers...........

The hygienist today was asking me if I had some trauma as a kid that made me so skittish. Apparently having a death grip on the arms of the chair, wincing, sweating profusely, and saying "Ouch" as best I could with someone's fist in my mouth equates to "skittish"!! Actually, I was very brave as a kid. Back then a trip to the dentist involved huge clamps that they would use to prop your mouth open so they could work unencumbered. Not much in the way of Novocaine, even bigger and sharper tools. But I was cool - totally not afraid - a good little patient.

As for needles, I was a Polio Pioneer for god's sake! Back when Jonas Salk was doing clinical trials on his vaccine, I was one of many groups of kids who went to the nurse's office regularly to get shots. Never knew if I was in the control group or receiving the actual vaccine, but it was no big deal. I even have the little 1954 Polio Pioneer card from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to show for all the effort!!

Then I grew up. Realized that needles hurt. That dentists hurt. That those giant rubber bands REALLY hurt! I realized what one slip of the jackhammer or ice pick could do to the inside of my mouth! And needles - well, they definitely qualify as an invasive procedure.

But, somehow I made it through. Think I'll go drink some red wine to help replenish all that blood, and eat a soft meal. As Scarlett O'Hara would say, "Tomorrow is another day!"