Teeth

On a recent failed attempt to clean our office, my husband found the following note that was to be read out loud to our dentist at his upcoming appointment.

In case you can’t read it, it says this:

Dr. Bremer,

Two days ago my wife bit into a frozen brownie because she had to eat it while the kids weren’t watching and therefore didn’t have time to let it thaw.  Ever since she bit into the brownie, her bottom front teeth have been sore.  She wonders if she may have bent the metal bar that is still across the back of her bottom teeth from when she had her braces off when she was 13.  The bar does not look bent or crooked to her untrained eye, but she is not an oral scientist.  Should she be concerned?

Amy in no way regrets eating the frozen brownie.
Although he refused to read it aloud as was instructed, Steve showed the note to our dentist who had me come in so she could check it out.  And so I did.  After asking me why the hell I still had that piece of metal in my mouth seventeen years after I got my braces off (to which I had zero to offer), she took a look and found nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that it was still there and I don’t floss properly around it and something about the gum disease gingivitis blah blah blah.  She was stumped as to what could be causing my teeth to hurt.  The only explanation she came up with was that maybe I had bruised my gums (on a brownie).  When I casually mentioned the fact that I had been wearing an old mouth guard I found in a drawer because I’d been really grinding my teeth again lately, my dentist, a distinguished woman in her mid 50s and on the brink of retirement after an illustrious dental career, actually whacked me on the head.  Really.  Apparently you can’t wear old mouth guards you unearth after years of neglect because your teeth move over time and so I was moving mine every night and then they were going back again during the day, which would make any mouth sore.  Or some such thing.  Who would have guessed?  Not me.  But this was just a mere drop in the water to my long and checkered past when it comes to mouth appliances.

My first appliance was a jaw expander, which is a medieval torture devise designed to solicit confessions of espionage or enlarge the palate–which ever came first.  The devise spanned the roof of my mouth and in the middle was a small box with a key hole.  My barbarian mother (you would have one to be in order to go along with this plan once the doctor suggested it) was the keeper of the key that fit that key hole, and every other night she’d pin me down, stick her arm up to about her elbow into my mouth, insert the key (which was attached to 50 feet of rope, lest it fell down my throat while I was biting her), and give it a crank.  This cause the jaw expander to, you guessed it, expand.

Here are some before and after palate expansion photos.

Before

One year later

I can see little difference in the mess that was my teeth, other than the fact that the expander seems to have made the situation worse.

Next came the teeth-moving retainer years.  By then I wasn’t even opening my mouth any more.

At this time I also had little spikes glued to the back of my front teeth so I wouldn’t push them forward with my tongue anymore.  That’s right, spikes.  I was beginning to think my parents wished they hadn’t adopted me…. To be continued…

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Props for the front page image go to tarale on Flickr.