As you probably know from my prompt post, I drove to Ottawa yesterday for my son’s dental appointment. To Ottawa and back is a six-hour drive; three there, three back.

I knew it was an assessment appointment to be sure he needed to go under general anesthesia to have his teeth cleaned. It’s not the first time he’ll have had the procedure, so we’ve been to this specific assessment appointment before.

What I didn’t expect was how much of a rush the dentist was in.

The hygienist led us to the examination room before we even sat down in the waiting room, and as Alex got in the chair, she handed me a clipboard and pen with a form to fill out.

The dentist came in, said hello, grabbed a mirror (I assume because I was looking at the form), asked Alex to open his mouth and (I assume) looked inside.

I was just getting to the address portion at the top of the form when the dentist said, “He has a lot of calcium build-up. We’ll get him in to the OR as soon as possible.”

And that was it.

Literally fifteen seconds of looking in his mouth and confirming the trip was worthwhile.

It took me five minutes to fill out the form.

It took me fifteen minutes standing in line to get a coffee.

And six hours of driving to get there and back.

And $60 worth of gas.

If he has to do this again, I might suggest taking a photo.

This rather frustrated stream of consciousness post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Find the prompt here and join in! It’s fun!