{"id":5552,"date":"2012-03-23T20:37:05","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T00:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=5552"},"modified":"2012-03-23T20:37:05","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T00:37:05","slug":"whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-dentist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=5552","title":{"rendered":"Who&#8217;s Afraid of the Big Bad Dentist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I went to the dentist&#8217;s office for a cleaning and checkup. This would not be in any way noteworthy had it not been my first dentist visit in 4 or 5 years. You see, when I moved to Rhode Island, I was nervous about picking a new dentist. Then I got pregnant and had a baby. Then I got pregnant again and had another baby. I used my pregnancies and the resulting busyness as an excuse for not going. And over the years I became more and more afraid of what problems a dentist visit might uncover. I became convinced that the dentist would first yell at me for waiting so long and then make one or more of the following pronouncements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Your gums have receded so much that you need several rounds of extremely painful surgery.<\/li>\n<li>Uh-oh. Someone needs a root canal. Wait, make that two. No, three!<\/li>\n<li>You have such a bad case of gum disease that all your teeth must be removed immediately.<\/li>\n<li>One of your teeth is infected and the infection has spread to your brain. You will probably die.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But amazingly none of those things happened. The hygienist said my gums are pink and healthy. The dentist said I need a couple of fillings replaced, but that&#8217;s just due to wear and tear, not negligence.<\/p>\n<p>Huh. So no brain infection.<\/p>\n<p>All that worry for nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I went to the dentist&#8217;s office for a cleaning and checkup. This would not be in any way noteworthy had it not been my first dentist visit in 4 or 5 years. You see, when I moved to Rhode &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=5552\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[429,70],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5552"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5556,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552\/revisions\/5556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}