HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

by Pam

There are Moms and there are MOMS and everyone knows which one they had. I had a MOM and she was mother to everyone and everything. After having six kids, she went back to school and got her Bachelors at age 40 and then became a teacher and mothered hundreds of kids. While she was still teaching and enjoying her quickly multiplying grandchildren, she went back to school and got her Masters when she was 50. What a role model. She was the coolest MOM and one of the neatest things she ever did was keep a daily journal from a writing class in college. We found it years later and learned, among other things, that in the early days of my Dad’s dental practice, she was apparently raising dentists.

Geriselda Balboa (1936-2001)

3-5-73. My husband hates to work on my teeth and I put if off until absolutely necessary. However, he now has a young dentist working with him. He just graduated from Baylor and is eager to do anything … even me. A few weeks ago he started a crown and ran into trouble so we were waiting for it to heal. In the meantime I had been sick but didn’t realize it was my tooth. When I came into the office on Friday he said, “Why didn’t you come in sooner?”

“I thought I had the flu and a sore throat. It was just yesterday that I thought of the tooth, and I already had this appointment.”

“Sit down here and let’s get you juiced up. We’ll take that nerve out. Open … wider, now don’t bite me.” He proceeds to put on a rubber dam, which is just what it sounds like, a piece of rubber that fits over the tooth being worked on and keeps everything else out of your mouth. It also keeps you quiet but not the dentist.

Now a young doctor from across the hall comes in and announces, “I have been chasing a BB around in a kid’s foot all morning. Just like trying to get a greased BB out of a sandbox.”

“Who shot him?”

“He shot himself. Dumb kid. What are you doing?”

“Going to do a root canal. Here, you just follow these instructions exactly.” He hands him a printed sheet. “Anyone can do it.”

The doctor read, “Clean out with steel bladed file, irrigate with peroxide … sounds pretty painful.”

“Yes, those little steel blade files can be a problem if you drop one. The old ones would dissolve in the peroxide, and if you dropped one in the canal, you just kept washing it out until it dissolved. These new steel ones won’t dissolve and you have to go down and get them … uh oh, were did that go?”

The assistant is busy looking, “I saw it … here it is”

I realized I had been holding my breath!

Now the dentist is pushing a file up and down in my mouth, looking at everyone but me, he says, “Say, let’s go diving this Saturday.”

The doctor says, “Shirley is sick, and all five of the kids.”

“Well, you need to get away. Just tell her.” Now he squirts something wildly in my mouth and says, “Don’t let this get in your eyes.”

In a minute I open my eyes. He is still squirting and I’m smoking. He is still looking at the doctor and saying, “I’m starving. If I’ve lost any weight, I’m going to have a Sam’s Super Burger.”

Now he decides to take an X-ray. The assistant develops it and returns shortly. She hands it to him and he shouts, “Wow!”

The doctor looks up, “Wrong tooth, huh?”

There is nothing but silence until the dentist looks up, “Oh, I think it will work.”

He comes back to do more pushing with the file and squirting. Then he says, “I think we will quit for today and I don’t think it will bother you tonight.”

He pops off the rubber dam and while I try to put my mouth back together he says, “Come back next Thursday and we will check it and clean it out some more.”

“Well” I stammer, “Uh, would you like Bob to finish it?”
(2009 Post) http://fleet20.blogspot.com/2009/05/happy-mothers-day.html