Getting Turned Away

     I knew that it could happen, but it has never happened to me before. My son had a dentist appointment today. They were going to put him under so they could fill a couple of his teeth (one hazard of nursing your child for over a year).  In order for them to do that, they wanted us there at 8:00 AM so he would be sleepy or sleeping by 8:30.

     I've driven to this office before. The first time that I drove there, I was an hour early for the appointment. This time, however, I arrived at 8:30, in time for the actual scheduled appointment, but they turned me away because they said it could take 30 minutes for him to fall asleep and it would put them behind schedule. It didn't matter that I had already driven an hour and a half to get there. It didn't matter to them that the appointment was scheduled at 8:30 and that there was no one at the desk when I first came in and had to wait an extra 5 minutes saying, "Hello?" They didn't care because it was going to put them behind.

      I try not to get angry for things like this, but boy did I get angry. My drive was only supposed to take 40 minutes at most. It did not. For some reason, my GPS thought it would take me away from the road construction that was happening and instead, I had to wait for trains to pass, lights to turn green, and average morning traffic. I have only used this GPS one other time and used it this time because my husband told me that it had never steered him wrong.... I could have screamed, and I definitely yelled in my car and thumped my head against the seat each time I got held up at another stop light. If it could have gone wrong, it did.

      If I was there early and had to wait because another person showed up late, I would be upset, but I would understand. If I was a business and I knew that someone was coming from way out of town, which they did, I might have tried to work something out in a way better than they did today. It took me an hour and a half to drive there and I made it back home in 40 minutes. The traffic was the same. It wasn't like I was unprepared. I left earlier than my gps and mapquest said to leave, but it didn't matter.

     You know, many, many years ago and man and his pregnant fiancé were travelling to get their taxes done. They were going at the pace that they were allowed to go in their condition and they were turned away several times. There wasn't any room in any of the inns and they actually had to find a place to stay in a stable with the horses and animals. This woman was very pregnant and ended up having her baby next to some cows or horses. The place was a cesspool for germs and probably smelled awful. Despite all that, they were grateful and they were used to fulfill a prophecy about a man who would die for our sins. When it's put that way, I guess that getting turned away isn't so terrible.

      Maybe we were supposed to get there late today. My whole household has been sick on and off. Maybe if he were to go through the procedure, he might have gotten an infection or became more sick. I don't know what could have happened, but hey, I guess, on the plus side, my son gets to go to school, today.