When I was 28, I had to get a dental implant because I neglected to do follow-up work (a “post and core”) to a root canal, which was just plain stupid. A frozen Kit Kat knocked the shell of my tooth right out of my mouth, and the only real option was to get an implant.
I got the first step in the implant process done - a root clearing - and then a couple months later I had to get the implant itself installed. This is considered surgery, since a hole must be bored into your skull from under your gumline where the implant gets screwed in.
Because it’s surgery, you have to take a Valium before the operation - and you can’t drive to or from the oral surgeon’s appointment. The office make a big deal about this point (“And you’ll be taking the medication one hour before, correct?”, “Do you have a ride?”, “Are you driving yourself?”, “You know you CAN’T drive yourself because you’re taking the medication!”) They try to trip you up like that.
Now because my mom was a big worrier, I never told her anything about my tooth cracking out, or about the implant process (which takes almost a year to complete). She’d have worried constantly about the pain, and the cost ($5,100 - only $50 of which was covered by insurance) and she’d be asking me questions for many months. And because I wasn’t going to tell my mom what I was having done, I didn’t tell anyone else in my family for fear word would get back to her. I had compartmentalized my dental situation, keeping the knowledge to only a few close friends.
During the fifteen minute ride, I tried to chitchat with her kids just enough not to seem like the weird quiet guy, but not so much as to come off as the weird overly-interested-in-young-kids guy.
And one of those friends, a teacher who lived about 45 minutes north of me, had kindly agreed to drive me to and from my appointment. We’d set it up weeks before, but she had a family emergency the morning of my operation. She called me and told me she could pick me up from the oral surgeon’s office to drive me home, but she wouldn’t be able to take me there. “But don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve already made arrangements for you.” Hmmm....
It turns out that she had a friend who lived close to me. This woman didn’t work, and she’d agreed to pick me up from my apartment and drive me to my oral surgeon’s appointment.
The thing that made it weird, though, was that this woman had two young kids. And since she stayed at home with them all day, she didn’t have anyone to watch them while she drove me. So when she picked me up, I wound up sitting in the back of her minivan with her kids.
She seemed to be a nice woman, but clearly she was at least a little uncomfortable picking up a strange man at his place and inviting him into her vehicle with her kids. During the fifteen minute ride, I tried to chitchat with her kids just enough not to seem like the weird quiet guy, but not so much as to come off as the weird overly-interested-in-young-kids guy.
When we arrived, I thanked her as sincerely as I could, but she seemed relieved just to have me exit her minivan. All that because I took a Valium that was supposed to calm me down for the surgery, and yet I remember not feeling any different the whole day.
So it was technically “help from an unexpected source,” but not in the typical “someone swooped in to save the day!” kind of way. It was just awkward, just like most of these incidents. Get used to it.
