Friday, June 04, 2004
Looking Good
The dog appreciates your good wishes. I took the day off yesterday to tend to him, and now he’s up in a special clinic with 24 hour care and an orthopod. They think they know what’s mostly wrong with him. We’re holding our breath.
In the meantime, I have to try to get some things taken care of. I have to keep myself focused on all the things that demand my focus. And that’s probably why I find myself compulsively blogging again, except, I choose to call it “therapy.” So, in the interests of the therapeutic process, I’d like to share something with you: I look better. I know, because I’ve been professionally diagnosed.
A month or so ago I went to my dentist, a serious professional who’s been treating me for about three years. She does a good job and she doesn’t hurt me more than it seems is actually necessary. She is pleasant and non-invasively chatty and I do feel better after visiting her. But last month our relationship seems to have evolved. She had my jaws gaping as she scraped the tartar from my incisors (I can’t believe they make sauce out of that stuff) and checked me for periodontitis, when suddenly she asked me, “You lose weight?”
“Yeah, a little, I guess.”
“You look better. You work out? Run?”
“Yeah, a little. And yoga.”
“That’s good. You look better.” Then she refocused the glaring overhead mantis-eye light into my corneas and resumed spelunking among my tonsils.
This exchange was, till recently, no more than a curiosity to me. She was making conversation so that I wouldn’t squirm too much as she sanitized my oral cavity. “You like football. You wear cowboy boots. You look better.” It was nothing to think twice about, even though I guess I did a little. Still, it wasn’t long before I just let it fade away like all the other meaningless conversations that one has in the course of a busy month.
But a few days ago Kelly visited this dentist for the first time. She needed a dentist and I was perfectly happy with Dr. T, who was in the neighborhood and took our insurance - there was no reason to bother looking around elsewhere. So Kel is in the chair, mouth agape, tools flashing and clashing in her mouth, and the doctor reminds her, “Your husband lost weight.”
“Yeah.”
“He looks much better.”
“.”
This has now gone from being pleasant conversation to the level of a professional diagnosis. I must have looked pretty crappy before, for my dentist to see my shame through that big paper-towel bib they make you wear. Someone who spends her days digging food out from between ill-tended teeth noticed how sickly and infirm I was. And then, six months later, I looked better - better enough to make an impression. I hope she put it in my chart. And that I can get a copy of it. You know, just for my records. In case I get in an accident, I want them to know I used to look even worse.
