What Lurks Behind

If I have learned anything from years of watching home improvement/renovation television shows, it that is you never know what is lurking behind the walls. Just because there appears to be functioning plumbing, wiring and structural integrity to the naked eye, there is no guarantee that things are not amiss when demolition begins.

And the human body is no different.

So when I went to the dentist to have a new permanent bridge made because my former dentist evidently did not understand what the word “permanent” meant, boy oh boy did we find a contractor’s nightmare: my back molar had hairline cracks from years of a structurally unsound device laid upon it-- the tooth crumbled once drilling began. And the molar supporting the device in the front had undetected decay—decay only evident once the enamel was chiseled away.

The simple restructuring project was not so simple after all.

It required overtime pay and a job delay.

And when the walls of my daughters’ bathroom met with the sledge hammer we too were met with surprise. The plumbing was in good condition as was the wiring. There was just one unexpected carpentry situation. The toilet had been leaking slowly over 70 years and so the beam supporting it had rotted away to less than a quarter of an inch. Had a human being of significant girth chosen to sit on the toilet they would have journeyed through the bathroom floor and found themselves in the dining room dazed and embarrassed.

And while contractors charge their clients more money for delays and unforeseen building issues, dentists do not. Dentists must eat the loss—which is a good thing since they are the experts  after all on corrective mastication and its building materials.