So the last vestiges of orthodontia were removed from my mouth this morning.  Oh sure, there’s still plenty of metal in my mouth, in the form of fillings, but nothing to keep my teeth from collapsing into disarray.  Not that they ever were in disarray to begin with.  I don’t remember my teeth ever being crooked in the first place and suspect the only reason I got braces as a child was that my mother never had them and had been ashamed of her not completely straight teeth her entire life.  I never saw her smile for a picture with her mouth open until she was 40 and got her braces off.  So I had braces twice because of my parent’s devotion to dental care.  Correction, my mother’s devotion to dental care.  My father didn’t go to the dentist for 25 years and still has never had a cavity.  He has perfect teeth which I obviously did not inherit.  So infuriating.  Anyway, since I was 15 and got my braces off, I have had this little piece of metal cemented in behind my bottom front teeth.  It’s called a lateral retainer and supposedly if I ever take it off my teeth will collapse into a pile or something.  Well, I’ve obsessively ran my tongue over it for the last 12 years and finally, last week, thought something was stuck in it and just would not come out no matter what I did.  This is not that odd of an occurence, but this time I decided to look and see what it was.  My retainer was broken!  After 12 years of constantly being rubbed, poked and prodded, it had broken down under the strain.  I ignored it for a couple of days, then decided perhaps the best plan of action was to go to a dentist to get it removed, so as not to spend my vacation in England with bits of metal poking into my gums.  And you KNOW you don’t want to have to get dental care in England;)  Well, after 45 minutes of waiting for the dentist this morning, (this part is kind of gross, sorry), I was biting my nail and got it stuck in my front teeth (this is a pretty common occurence, too).  So I was trying to work it out with my nail and there, into my hand, fell part of the little wire!  So I’d come to the dentist two days in a row, spent two hours there total, not to mention $45 and i could have done it myself all along.  Of course, the dentist ground down the cement and now I cannot stop running my tongue along my newly smooth teeth.  My tongue doesn’t seem to fit in my mouth correctly.  Oh, and my teeth are completely crooked again.  Just kidding.  The dentist said i should go to the orthodontist and get a retainer so they don’t all go cockamamey, but I think I’ll take my chances.  The top ones haven’t gone anywhere yet, other than my overbite, that was never really much of an overbite, is back.  Ah, medicine is just a giant moneypit.  Don’t even get me started on veterinary medicine!

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Comments

Tim

2004-06-16T19:19:53.000Z

Is not that bad. They’re just not all that thorough.

Dr. Wolfe, D.D.S.

2004-06-17T14:34:35.000Z

Let us look at the picture book…The Big Book of British Smiles.

Lisa

2004-06-17T17:51:46.000Z

I like the picure with the tooth growing through the face.  I want that one.

Tarv

2004-06-17T17:56:57.000Z

I had the same thing put in my mouth when I was a kid after my braces were removed, and was told repeatedly that it needed to stay there for at least my next 6 or 7 lifetimes.  What would have happened had I come back as an oak tree is beyond me.  Anyway, a dentist looked at it recently and said it needed to come out, was doing more harm than good.  And much like you, after tongueing that damn thing for, oh, let’s see, 15 years I guess, it is gone.