MINI SERMONS

YESTERDAY WAS A DAY OF MINI SERMONS...

 

By the dental hygienist I got told (like I have been told by every dentist for the past 10 years) that I grind my teeth at night, that I need to be fitted for a mouth guard, that I was wearing down my molars.  Visions of a boxing mouth guard and molars soon to become nubs, much like baby antlers poking through a baby deer's skull, flashed in my head.  I let her say her spiel, kind of like letting a telemarketer say their 1-800 number before I hang up so at least they get sales contact credit for the call.   I smiled.  No, I told her, I had enough I dealt with on a daily basis without adding yet another thing to keep track of and do. 

She put the camera pen in my mouth, taking pictures of each tooth.  By the way, no one's teeth look good up close, let alone 46 year old teeth.  It's a bit like the philosophy that tan fat looks better than pale white fat.  Up close anything in mid life is never a grand idea nor flattering!  Her sermon morphed to declaring, with great urgency, about the 4 cracks in my back bottom right molar.  Surely it bothered me, was sensitive, was on the brink of destruction, she emphasized in her sermonie voice.  NOPE, I told her, it was feeling great and until pain drove me to the inevitable root canal and crown that was in that tooth's future, I would gamble daily for as long as it held up.  To me it was paramount to my car dealer telling me I would need new tires in 20,000 more miles but opting to spend the $1200 now to buy them when there is still wear on them! 

Her sermons were not garnering salvation, repentance, agreement or acquiescence from me.  She had to say them, was compelled even.  I though, did not have to do them or even agree with her timetable.   And I did not:)

By the nurse practitioner at the OBGYN office during my yearly exam, I got told that because I was a thin white woman in my upper forties I needed to take calcium - brittle bones would get me (I didn't even bother to tell her I have a borderline high calcium level in my body).  She needed to speak her mini sermon.  I let her preach with no intention of taking calcium. She could be happy, and so could I.  I also wasn't taking enough vitamin D or fish oil.  Evidently, I was not living up to the vitamin and mineral standards out there. 

As she performed the breast exam in both the prone and veritcal positions, she wondered if I did breast exams.  Here we go again, I thought!  No, not really.  It all feels the same to me, I humorously declared to her.  She frowned and moved to sermon point number 2.  Did I have my mammogram last year?  Nope, I said.  When did I have my last mammogram?  Hmmmm, 4 or 5 years ago, I said with a smile knowing that her preaching voice was going to flow shortly.  Did I know that breast cancer was the most highly treatable cancer, if caught early?   I did not want to disrespect that fact, but I just hadn't made the appointment for the mammogram from the brochure they give me every year at my gyno appointment.  Her displeasure with my slacking ways was clearly visible on her face

A good sermon should always shame you into something.  Guilt you to action.  Cause you to succumb to the weight of the topics discussed.  Something.  She knew I couldn't be trusted to get the appointment made for a mammogram, but would take the brochure home and throw it away after a respectable amount of time.  Leaving the room briefly she returned with a date and time scheduled for a mammogram.  I suspect it was her way of feeling like she got a convert, someone to go to the medical altar call she had been pleading for.  I still though am not going to take calcium.