Sunday, December 02, 2018

VISITS FROM THE DENTIST (Nursing Home Life, part 9)

Our dentist came by the other day. It was his second visit to our suite at Laurier House. The first time he came he launched his customary social chat before looking in David’s mouth. It was a one-sided chat. David thinks very clearly, but says very little these days. “It feels awkward talking at you instead of having a real conversation,” Scott said to David. I laughed. “Isn’t this what dentists do all day, conduct one-sided conversations with people whose mouths are immobilized?” “I guess so,’ he said. “But this is a bit different.” I was relieved at his honesty. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a curious relationship between being open about discomfort and being willing to persist in spite of it. On this second visit, he adjusted David’s bed to a favourable position, looked in David’s mouth and painted his future cavities with a compound designed to protect them from further deterioration. Then he showed me how to check for infections and offered to borrow space in a wheel chair accessible dental clinic if serious dental work was required. . He said he’d be back in four months. “Thank you for coming here,” I said. It felt like understatement to me. It seemed such an inadequate response, given that Laurier House is not convenient to his office or his home. “I wanted to do it,” he replied. I didn’t doubt that he meant it. He knows how important dental work has been to David. In the days when he was independent, David would never have missed a check-up, or passed up an opportunity to improve his dental health. Scott has been our family dentist for ten years or so. He’s been a partner on this journey. We never asked him to come to Laurier House. He simply volunteered to do it when I told him that David wasn’t able to get out to see a dentist. He first knew David as someone who wanted a 7:00 AM appointment so he could squeeze dental work in the time between an early morning six-mile run and a punctual appearance at the office. Then came the time when every visit showed us how Multiple systems Atrophy had changed David’s body in the six months since the last. The Journey to care for David’s teeth has continually been hampered by obstacles and problems that needed solutions. I remember how the small spaces around Scott’s dentist’s chair seemed to shrink when David started using a walker, then shrank beyond recognition when we had to take the wheelchair into the office and use the walker as a support to help him transfer from one chair to the other. It was Scott who suggested that we start taking David to a wheelchair accessible office. This meant changing dentists, and we tried that. But David wanted Scott. So we compensated by taking two men to every appointment to assist with David’s transfer. It was Scott who suggested that we hydrate David’s mouth to keep his teeth healthier. That was several years ago. It worked then. On this visit we told Scott that we now use drops to dehydrate David’s mouth to keep the fluid from building up in his chest. He shrugged sadly and said he’d do the best he could in the circumstances. Sometimes this journey through David’s progressive illness feels a bit like one of those hop on hop off city tours we used to take. There are many stops along the way. People get on. People get off. There really aren’t words to describe how grateful I am to those who stay with it, for David or for me. They have to be tough enough to witness the slow and painful progression. They have to be confident enough to do things they can do and humble enough to avoid being overwhelmed by the things they cannot fix. In return, David and I do our best to be cheerful and positive, but we’re not exactly fun to be around, and it’s quite some time since we’ve been in a good position to return a favour. I try to remember to be amazed at the number of people who stay with us in spite of their freedom to go. I will not likely be able to pay them all back, but perhaps I will have a chance to pay some of it forward.

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