the quest for a dentist appointment

I never thought it would be difficult to get a dentist appointment. You know, you call the dentist, say you want to pay him/her to clean your teeth, and then they put you on their schedule, right? Wrong.

First you have to enroll with the insurance provider and select a dentist. Did that. Then the dentist has to be accepting new patients and they have to APPROVE you as a patient. Interesting, but I did that too. The woman at the insurance company said that my enrollment should be approved by the dentist by 7/1 and at that point, I could call for an appointment. After three weeks of hearing "The insurance company has not sent over the new roster yet, call back next week", I finally got an appointment with the dentist today. Here's a snippet from that conversation:

Her (Bitch): Would you like to be put on the cancellations list?
Me: What's that?
Her: We'll call you if somebody cancels and you can come in at an earlier date.
Me: OK that sounds good.
Her: When was your last cleaning?
Me: I'm a new patient with this dentist.
Her: You've never had a cleaning before?

Silence.

Me: January 2007.