I got the message that they were rescheduling appointments on Monday or Tuesday, and then got an email with all the new protocols:
- only the patient or patient+one guardian
- stay in your car until your appointment time
- wear a mask
- wash your hands in the hallway restroom (they even gave out the bathroom door code!)
And it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I was thinking maybe I could reschedule for a couple of months out, but when we finally stopped playing phone tag, they had an appointment the very next day and I hated to say no. I mean, they were open, they could finally work, I'm sure they needed to fill in the calendar. So on Friday, I went to the dentist.
When I got there, I sent them a text letting them know I had arrived, and then they replied when it was safe to come up (meaning, they could take me straight back and avoid multiple patients breathing up the waiting room. Cool, cool). I did wash my hands--not every day you get the secret code for the restroom--and wore a face mask in until they were ready to get in my mouth. They took my temperature and my blood oxygen levels and had me sign a form saying I wouldn't sue if I got coronavirus--all fine, I like my dentist and have no desire to sue him for something that is clearly beyond human control.
I opted out of watching TV during the appointment because, hey, this was the first time I'd been in a room with other actual people, and my dentist and his assistant always have very entertaining conversations. I was NOT going to pass that up to binge TV. I can do that basically all day every day. Face-to-face human conversation? That is novel these days.
The funniest part was that they were both wearing masks and face shields. Kind of a weird experience to have your dentist wearing a face shield, but really, not that big of deal. A little odd, but what was so funny about it was that with the equipment going and the mask AND the shield, it got hard for them to hear each other. So, they were talking about breakfast cereal and the assistant asked if the dentist had ever had Pops (Corn Pops). And he didn't understand and he said, "What? Socks?"
"No, Pops." "I have no idea what you just said." And they went back and forth 2-3 times before he figured out it was Corn Pops. All of which was very entertaining for me, even though I couldn't laugh or anything because they were drilling my teeth. Whatcha gonna do.
Anyway, it was the first of many reminders that things aren't going back to normal any time soon. Every day there are more and more people out and about and on one level there's this sense of, "Hey, things are getting back to normal." And then you go out and you get this shock because it isn't normal. It really isn't. Dentists wear face shields, people wear face masks, grocery stores still don't have products and have markers to space people out. It's not a new normal. Normal is a pretend thing. It's just an interesting new way of living. And once we get used to it, it will change again. That, my friends, is normal.
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