Ever Had a Left-Handed Hygienist Clean Your Teeth?

I have.  Today.

She’s bubbly, friendly, funny, gentle and left-handed.  It was so cool.  It doesn’t take much to excite me these days I guess.  She’s the first left-handed hygienist I’ve had.  I thought I had noticed her position in her chair as she cleaned my teeth the last time I was at the Dentist and today I asked her about it.  Not everything she did was the complete opposite of doing it all right-handed.  She said that in school her teachers ONLY knew the right-handed method of cleaning teeth and when she and her 3 other left-handed classmates (she tells me that’s very unusual for one class to have more than one left-handed person in it) got stuck trying to figure out how to do the next part of the exam they were learning with their left hand, the instructors would be stumped and wouldn’t know what to tell them.  She said it was really good in the long run because she had to problem solve each roadblock they hit in the mouth on their own (that seems very strange to articulate in writing) and not everything was completely opposite.  She also was forced to learn the right-handed method too in order to get by.  Pretty interesting actually.  So she then answered the next question I was going to ask her which was why it seemed like she had different methods for cleaning than what I was used to.

And why am I even talking about this?  Well because I had a good dental appointment today for the first time in years!  There are no real issues to report.  I PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS!  Amazing!  Not only do my wisdom teeth (crazy that I still have them) look good with no areas to watch for cavities, but my gums aren’t as irritated or bleeding (can happen with not only lupus and MS, but also with the medications I take for both–isn’t that just great???), and all the other teeth are good too.  Sure I have a bit of a cracked tooth (have no idea how that happened–guess this it it–I’m getting old…) but the Dentist had no worries about that AT ALL.  Oh and a lot of times my jaw and face muscles in general get really tired of being open for a long period of time (MS and lupus related during the cleaning and I didn’t have much of a problem with that either.

I think it’s the first doctor appointment I’ve had in a long time that was so positive–and get this–NORMAL.  It’s a really nice feeling.  I’ve been kind of a high all day about it because I feel like I rarely ever get a break from any doctor these days.  There’s always this underlying black/grey cloud hanging over my head about something.  I just have to stay very diligent about all the brushing, flossing, etc. that I do to keep up and all should be well.

Considering it was quite hot today it’s been a pretty good day overall.  It’s nice to be able to say that.

Thank you all for being here on the road to recovery with me.  It feels really good to share with you.

Hope you’re having a good week!