Sophie’s dentist moved away from Los Angeles a while back, and it’s taken me about a year to find a new one. I won’t belabor the fact that there are virtually no dentists who take people with disabilities. I found one who has a special needs dentistry clinic and was willing to give it a whirl without putting Sophie “under” as they say and it took several months of wrangling to get an appointment. Today was the day we went to meet the new one and to get Sophie’s teeth cleaned. It didn’t go too well because New Dentist wanted a full set of x-rays right off the bat and wouldn’t take them unless Sophie could stay super still. She’s not going to stay still, I told him. I’ll need to help, I told him. The dentist wouldn’t let me help hold her so that he could do x-rays. He maintained that it’s against the American Dental Association to do that. The whole exchange was so beyond what I’m able to write because, one, it was boring, but two, it was absurd and I felt strangely disconnected from my body sitting there with Sophie in her wheelchair, tilted back. Even when I explained that I’d been taking Sophie to the dentist at least three and usually four times a year for about twenty-five years, that she was only under general anesthesia when she had four wisdom teeth pulled, he was adamant. The fact that I’ve contorted my body into a type pretzel in order to help the dentist clean Sophie’s teeth is beside the point. It can be done. New Dentist wouldn’t clean her teeth. He had reasons, New Dentist reasons, that had something to do with what if she has holes in between her teeth and you absolutely can’t help her keep still for x-rays because that’s against the rules and I respect his reasons, but it was another episode of Monty Python for us, in retrospect. For instance, in addition to telling him that I’d been doing this for her entire life, I told him that Sophie had uncontrolled seizures, and that’s why I hesitate to do the whole anesthesia thing — that she never does well in the week following anesthesia. New Dentist asked, How often does she have seizures? I answered, Well, she’s doing great now and going a few days and even a week without a seizure, but they’ve generally been at least once a day for her entire life and sometimes many times but lately she’s doing incredibly well and I don’t want to mess that up. New Dentist looked stricken and asked, But don’t They give her anything for the seizures?
Reader, this is a question that I periodically received back in the last millenium, and I always thought that I’d reply with a snappy, What a great idea! We hadn’t thought about giving her something, so thanks! I was struck dumb today, though, so dumb that I don’t even remember what I said but I was a mouth and I was talking (24 drugs and two rounds of the ketogenic diet, yadda yadda yadda) and he was a dentist (how about surgery?) and he was looking at me with these big eyes, I think, and I was thinking what’s up with the whole surgery thing New Dentist? and he admitted to not knowing anything about seizures but had heard surgery could be great and I was a mouth that kept talking and tutting in the way that I do but maybe this whole visit didn’t really happen and we really didn’t even leave without a cleaning because Nice Dentist claimed he had to see her entire set of x-rays before proceeding and he didn’t have an opening for an under-anesthesia x-ray session and cleaning until after the new year and I wondered whether twenty-seven years had really passed with me doing these things and me answering these questions and
well
Reader, take a look at this: “These Doctors Admit They Don’t Want Patients With Disabilities”. New Dentist is not one of these doctors as he’s working with special needs patients, but I hope you’ll muse on it a bit, muse on the Great American Healthcare System and the terrible mashup of money and care and think about what it means to be disabled, when you or someone you love will be disabled because you will all of us will and you’re welcome to walk in our footsteps but we need a hand now.
I feel for you. Once, in an attempt of distracting myself from panic and murdering thoughts, I asked a particular ill-trained (my own opinion) arrogant dentist why he chose this profession. He replied that from early age, his main interest had been "fiddling with model airplanes and tanks and stuff" and that he was especially attracted to the small tool sets and the various chemicals of model making and that the step from this hobby (fetish?) to dentistry was but a minor one. Personally, I believe 99% of dentist are heartless and in it for the money.
Dammit, Elizabeth. Just dammit dammit dammit. Dammit.
I send you love every day. Here's some extra. Big hugs.