Teeth and Sympathy.

Dental torture yesterday. I was prepared to give high marks to the evil dentist except for just a couple of deal breakers. He aced the numbing score - I didn't feel a thing. However I was left sitting in the chair for 40 minutes to "get numb" which is to say so he could take another patient and get back to me. The grinding wasn't bad, just noisy. The temporary they gave me is, however, a piece of crap. It's rough and nasty. Plus he did some fitting thing and it got stuck. He then nearly broke my jaw (and several other teeth) getting it out so that he could glue it back in!

Ran some errands afterward - hair cut, oil change, exercise and groceries. Got home and was putting away the groceries when the phone rang. Husband took it and proceeded to say "uh huh" about 300,000 times. When he hung up, he told me it was the vets. I needed to talk to them but he never gave me the phone. He told me he thought I was busy and I pointed out that he was making decisions for me again. I hit upon the key points of I don't want to have all the little stuff build up until I'm too frustrated to function. He said he didn't understand why he couldn't do any thing right. Then he got up to leave. I asked him if he was going to the living room to sulk. God bless him, he sniffled yes. I said what good does that do why won't you stay and finish this discussion. I explained that when he did that I didn't feel like I could talk to him about things that bug me. And that leads to building frustration until I just blow up. I ended up having to tell him about the good things he does - which is a little frustrating because I don't particularly want to reassure him when I'm pissed at him. On the whole, though, it was a better outcome than usual.

Plus we got to discuss the pros and cons of spending big money to torture the dog with tests that were completely inconclusive when we did them last year at this time. Now unless the vet can say something decisive to change my mind about the value of the exercise, we're just going to let it go. Yes he has something wrong with him, but I can not see spending weeks torturing my 12 year old dog with tests when he eats well, sleeps well and has slowed down but is otherwise normal and happy.