Dental Hygienists in Print

 

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TOOTH NOTES AUGUST 2008  by  Lois Foster Hirt

Note: If anyone spots a  hygienist mention in any media, please contact me, even if you think I might already know about it. Thanks!

Email: loismile@aol.com
Ph- (310) 271-6944
Fax-(310)  273-317

BELONG TO ME   Marisa de los Santos.  (Wm Morrow  ISBN  -978-0-06-124027-0)  There are some references to the previous book LOVE WALKED IN. The story stays in a Philadelphia suburb but goes back and forth between the Browns and the Tremains with the story of a young mother dying and her best friend coping and doing things for her included in each chapter. The mystery in the book is who is Dev's father and will he ever find him? Make sure you have a box of tissues handy when reading this. Enjoy, Lois Hirt
      Cornelia Brown and her husband Teo, whom she has known and loved since she was four, followed her desire to leave New York City and move to the peaceful suburbs. He has no trouble getting a job as an oncologist. She dropped her PhD studies but hopes to pick them up again. She has had a miscarriage but now can't get pregnant. She isn't fully welcomed into the neighbor especially by her next door neighbor Piper Truitt who lets her know they were hoping people with children would move in and throws hints that she has to do something with her lawn and empty flower boxes. She gets to meet the neighbors when another doctor's wife has a dinner party in their honor.
      She finds solace and a friend in Lake Tremain, a waitress whom she meets in a grocery store when buying ingredients for her favorite meal she can't find in town. Lake informs her Vincente's, the restaurant she works in, has it, but only for its employees. She might be able to get invited to lunch. She is relatively new to town and has moved there with her teenage son, Dev, who is a “genius genius”. They left California because his system had no idea of how to teach him. Thanks to a California psychologist, Dev into a special public school that caters to kids like him  and blossoms there. Why did Lake pick this suburb to move to? She isn't the only one with secrets.
      Piper has two young kids and is busy helping her best friend and neighbor Elizabeth Donahue and her family. Elizabeth is dying, and Piper is trying to cope with that idea. Piper is there to take care of the kids and run things for Elizabeth and her husband Tom. Meanwhile Piper's husband tries to let her know he isn't happy. She doesn't have time to deal with his problems.
      These are some dental tidbits: The main dental comes in with the mention of how Lake and Dev had spent some Thanksgivings. Lake turns downs Cornelia's Thanksgiving invitation explaining that Dev looked forward to being just with her. When Dev hears his mother tell that lie, he feels that it makes him “sound like the world's whiniest mama's boy. Back home in California, holiday dinners tended to be pretty informal, but usually there was a crowd: Lake's restaurant friends; Principal Levy and her husband Brewster: wayward neighbors: some guy Lake was dating, even people like their mail carrier or the oral hygienist who cleaned Dev's teeth. Anyone who didn't have a lot of family nearby or any family at all. #2. Tom is explaining to Piper that he had to use Abby Lau instead of her sister Lauren because Lauren broke a tooth while playing tennis. Tom contemplates how one could break a tooth playing tennis, and Piper answers, “I cannot imagine.” 3. Piper hands over some “healthy” snacks for her kids to Cornelia. Piper tells her “After two, kids can get plaques.” Cornelia asks, “Really. On their teeth?” “Arteries,” said Piper. 4.  Piper notices Elizabeth is angry. “Usually the anger spattered out like grease from a pan and cold be directed toward anyone” One of the people was Tom when he bought “the wrong fruit (tangerines instead of clementines), the wrong sheets (carded percale instead of mercerized sateen), the wrong small bottled waters (plain instead of fluoridated). 5. Piper feels lust when Tom touches her. “Still, as she turned off her bedroom light, her last thought was that it could have been anyone who set her off. For what seemed like forever, she had been touched by men, Kyle, her hairdresser, her dentist—in entirely predictable ways.” 6. Piper's son Carter grinned “up at her with his tiny, square tile white, symmetrical teeth. Ever ahead of the pack, Emma, Elizabeth's daughter, had lost her first tooth a week ago and refused to put it under her pillow. Instead, she tucked it into the very back of her ballerina jewelry box “to keep for Mommy.” 7. “When asked a direct question, Piper was fundamentally incapable of lying to her children. It was not that she believed in a strict adherence to the truth—she played the Santa Claus/tooth fairy/Easter bunny game like everybody else-it was that  when caught in the clear blue beam of their gaze and asked, lying felt so utterly counterintuitive that she never managed to eke one out.” 8. Although I am not a waxer myself (when I told Piper this, she gave me the sort of look you'd give someone who claimed not to brush her teeth), I could imagine that even a hotshot cell phone used like Piper would prefer not to have a conversation while hair was being systematically ripped from her body.”

DROP CITY –T.C. Boyle  (Penguin  ISBN-0-14-200380-8) The book takes us back to the 1970s. It alternates between Drop City, a hippie commune in northern California near the Russian River, and Boynton Hot Springs a very small town in Alaska and then combines the two groups up in Alaska.

      Two years ago Norm Sender used the property his parents left him to create a commune called Drop City. It is a typical hippie commune. Everyone and anyone is welcome. No holds are bared on sex, drugs, or alcohol. They believe in peace and the simple life. The women pitch in to cook; the men to do the odd chores. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot done about hygiene and government officials have warned Sender about that and other situations. He doesn't want to spend money on lawyers to fight the government. When Drop City is threatened to be leveled after being warned, Norm buys a school bus so they can move to Alaska and create Drop City North. Some of the members have cars so they can create a caravan to go to Alaska. There are a number of people living together including kids, but the story focuses on a few people.

      Meanwhile in Boynton Hot Springs, women are scarce and men and alcohol plentiful. Cecil, Sess, Harder-is going into Fairbanks, the largest city around, to get and bring back Pamela to his little piece of happiness. She is going to spend several days with him and then another man to decide which she will marry. She has no intension of having sex until she gets married.

      How Drop City North tries to mesh their lives with the inhabitants of Boynton is quite interesting. They discover neither northern California nor Boynton are really thrilled to have them living near-by. The experience opens up some of the hippies to think of what it is they really want in life and who they want to spend their lives with.

      The book does a ton of dental tidbits. The RDH mention comes in with Sess meeting Pamela in the restaurant to bring her back. “Sit down,” she said showing off her perfect white teeth, the teeth of a dental hygienist or a stripper, teeth that said hello and watch out at the same time.” Some highlights are 1.-“There were times, hefting his pack, sticking out his thumb, waking in a strange bed or in some nameless place that was exactly like every other place, when it infected him with a dull ache, like a tooth starting to go bad, but mostly now his parents were compacted in his thoughts till they were little more than strangers.”

2. “You got to feel safe here, don't you?” “Sure, as long as I don't have to perform any emergency appendectomies. On myself, that is, Or you.” “The auto-appendectomy,” she said, and they both laughed. “Or dental work, Imagine trying to pull your own tooth?” They were silent a minute, contemplating the horror of that particular image, and then she said, “I'll pull yours if you pull mine,” and they were laughing again.

3. -“Norm's breathy was stale, or worse than stale—rotten. The teeth were rotting in his head and his head was rotting on his body. He didn't believe in dentists—only shamans—because it wasn't caries that caused your teeth to fall out, but the evil spirits of dentists gone down, and he had the gold in his mouth to prove it,”

4. And toothpaste, never forget toothpaste. He'd spent one whole winter brushing his teeth with his forefinger and another using a mixture of baking soda and salt that ate the bristles out of the brush.”

5. In desperation, he wrapped his arms round his shoulders, shivering so hard he thought his fillings were going to come loose.”

6. -“It was clear now to the teeth of the stars.”

7. “Until two weeks ago, she'd never even seen a goat---or if she had, it might have been at a petting zoo or pumpkin patch when she was ten and her jaws were clamped tight over her braces because she wouldn't dare smile with all that ugly metal flashing like a lightbulb in her mouth---and here she was milking the two of them like an expert, like a milkmaid in a Thomas Hardy novel, Star of the D'Urbervilles, and the whole community dependent on her,”  

      CERTAIN GIRLS= Jennifer Weiner (Atria ISBN 13-978-07432-9425-6) This non-mystery-is the sequel to GOOD IN BED, which I read. The book chapters alternate between Cannie Shapiro Krushelenansky who is married to Dr. Peter Krushelenansky & her thirteen year old daughter Joy Krushelenansky. Peter is not Joy's father. Cannie was never married to Bruce, Joy's father, who split when he found out Cannie was pregnant. He is married and back in the picture.
     -Before Cannie married Peter, she wrote BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY, a partial fictionalized book about her & her family. It was an instant best seller. Now she is a successful sci fi author writing under an AKA. No one knows this, & she wants it to stay that way. At one point she is approached to write another novel & to promote it, & she is petrified.
       The story deals with Joy who soon will have her Bat Mitzvah, & has just secretly read BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY. The problem is Joy believes the written word & doesn't discuss this with Cannie. How she handles it is another story. Due to her premature birth, Joy has a hearing loss & has to wear hearing aids. She wants to be a normal teenager, fit in, & being a typical teenager, is there such a thing, she deals with this in her own way. Cannie being a very protective mother, attempts to shield her daughter from the world. The two clash over these situations. Cannie's sister Elle tries to help but she is not your normal individual either.
      Peter wants to have a baby with Cannie. The problem is she had to have a hysterectomy after having Joy. They hunt for a surrogate mother but fail to inform Joy of their intentions. Big mistake.
      The dental tidbits: 1.Cannie & her friend Samantha (SAM) are discussing Sam's love life or lack of. They are talking about internet dating & older & married men signing on which bring up the subject of Cannie's father. She mentions she hasn't seen him more than twice in fourteen years. She figures he is still married to the much “younger dental hygienist with whom he had two kids.” She is brought in again when Joy, as a very small child, & Cannie are discussing family. Cannie mentally states, “My father had left when I was a teenager, married a much younger woman and had two kids. “After their discussion, Cannie turn's the light off in Joy's room: “I stood there in the darkness, looking down at her, wondering whether she'd think that people-no, not people, parents-could just drop out of your life like loose teeth.” The RDH appears as a real person on 3 pages when Joy talks to her. In BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY, Cannie described Allie's , the protagonist, father's new wife as slender. Joy thinks, “maybe this woman had been once, but as some point she'd crossed the line from slender to skinny & looked pretty close to emaciated, like one of those actresses whose pictures they show under the words EATING DISORDER??? On the covers of supermarket magazines. The ex-Mrs. Shapiro had a corded neck and scrawny arms. The short-sleeved V-necked pink scrubs revealed the cracked shin of her elbows, the bony plate of her chest.” 2.  In one of Cannie sci fi stories, she has protagonist Lyla wearing a necklace of teeth. In another one, Lyla has blood on her teeth. 3. Cannie is talking with her mother when her mother brings up Elle running off with a man who had no teeth. Cannie reminds her he was a hockey player who “didn't have no teeth, he just had fake teeth.” 4. Her mother also remembers Cannie's brother didn't speak to her for a year claiming “his braces hurt too much for him to talk.”  5. Toothpaste, mouthwash, breath mints, flossing., brushing also have roles. 6. Because there are teenagers in the novel, braces and retainers pop in and out. “Amber gross has chestnut-brown hair, straight & shiny as a satin curtain, & a twinkly smile that would make you think her braces are jewelry she had commissioned for her teeth.” 7. Talking about the school kids-“Next to the misfits are the boy jocks, the soccer & lacrosse players, then the girl jocks, the ones who tie their colored rubber mouth guards to shoelaces & wear them like necklaces around their necks.

They went to the I-Hop to make ends meet, she was studying to become a dental hygienist at night. Nina informs Marty, “I'm ditching Bobbie-Sue. I can't take any more of those wing-nut color consultants. Those courses I was taking as a hygienist are kinda cool, and I can move in with my grandmother until I'm done. Then I can find another job.” Six months down the line, “I swear, Nina I can't believe you'd rather go digging around in someone's mouth than sell Bobbie-Sue.' Marty chuckle, leaning back into the warmth of Keegan's embrace. ----Nina threw her head back and laughed. ‘I really think I'm doing the right thing. I have a job lined up already, and it's a regular paycheck with benefits. Beats the shirt out of those crazy color freaks.'---Marty stepped between them (Wanda & Nina) wiggling a warning finger. ‘Quit. Both of you. We're here to celebrate Nina's graduation from dental hygienist school---.”

     Jennifer Weiner includes dentistry in LITTLE EARTHQUAKES when one family finds out their baby has a hole in his heart. The doctors tells the parents one scenario the child might have is that “He'll have to take antibiotics before he goes to the dentist.”

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