Day 8 – Cindy

I’ve been a terrible person, and I’ve neglected my teeth…so Cindy is my new hygienist. I have to say, I’m glad that my teeth aren’t in all that bad of a shape after not having been to a dentist in a while. Cindy is 52 years old now and she has been in her job for 30 years, which means she actually found a job back at the age of 22 and somehow lucked out enough to really love it. She really wanted to teach back in the days, but I think she gets the same joy of teaching by teaching her patients how to upkeep their oral health. It’s nice to see people enjoying their job the way she does. She now wishes to impart on her two sons the knowledge that you should never be afraid to trust the detours in life and not choose a path and stubbornly follow it.
At some point I asked her how much more difficult is it to work on someone with a small mouth because I’ve seen some really small mouth and it seems like despite my huge mouth, it’s still a small space to work with there. She said, “Oh it’s not too bad. It’s actually the mentally impaired patients that are tough. And sometimes we get patients with Alzheimer's.” It’s weird how you don’t really think about people having to deal with certain things until they tell you. I don’t know who I feel more sorry for, the poor hygienist with the patients freaking out every five seconds or the poor patients who can’t understand what the fuck this person is doing to them.