Dental Perspective

Today I went to the dentist for a cleaning. As is my nature, when the polite hygienist asked me "how it was going" with my braces, I didn't...uh...hold back: "I hate them." She looked surprised, concerned even: "Oh! Are you having problems with them?" My gaze was steady. "No. No problems. I just hate them, the way they feel, the extra work they require, and then there's that pesky aspect of them making me look like I'm 12 years old when I'm in the process of establishing myself at a new job and meeting people who assume I'm the Doogie Howser of the business world, and then snicker about it to all of their co-workers who look like actual adults. So, I'm not entirely happy about the whole braces THANG."

"OH. I, um... see." Then, glad to have a legitimate reason to tell me to stop talking, she gestured to the chair and prepared to use one of her scary torture devices to scrape and poke around the softest, most sensitive tissue in my mouth, which happened to be surrounded by lots of metal blockades and wires, making her job much, much more difficult. And therefore causing it to take much, much longer. She didn't hold my braces bitterness against me, though, and chose to continue our thrilling conversation while she scraped and scraped, probably while her hand was cramping from the effort: "Well, you know, your teeth are looking great! You keep them so clean! You'll be so glad you got the braces!" Do they say this to everyone? Do they tell everyone that they're impressed with their dental hygiene while hypocritically spending AN HOUR scraping build-up off of those very same "clean" teeth?? Every time I go, they tell me how impressed they are with my amazingly clean teeth and healthy gums. Before I had braces, they were blown away that I could actually manage to floss around the train wreck that was my bottom middle teeth; now that the braces have (for the most part) straightened those monstrosities, they are proud of the fact that I take the time to THREAD THE FLOSS THROUGH THE WIRES EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. (You know, I'm kind of impressed by this, too, now that I think about it.)

While I was lying there with my mouth open, allowing Polite Hygienist to wield sharp objects around my pink, healthy, vulnerably exposed gums, I was thinking God I wish I could talk right now so I could tell her, YES, YES, I KNOW I'll be happy I got the braces ONCE THEY'RE OFF! It's RIGHT NOW that I hate them, don't you understand!? RIGHT NOW!!! But because Polite Hygienist was busy scraping, scraping, scraping away on my INCREDIBLY CLEAN TEETH OHMYGOD THESE ARE SO CLEAN YOU'RE JUST AMAZING!, I couldn't say that. I was forced to listen to the dentist talking in the room next to me. Here is what I heard:

Dentist: I looked at your x-rays, and I don't see how we can save these top four. And the bottom ones don't look much better.

Frail Old Patient: Yeah, I know.

Dentist: I looked at the x-rays you had done in 2001, then in 2003, and compared them to today's. The deterioration is very rapid.

Frail Old Patient: Oh.

Dentist: I'm going to come on your right side so you can hear me better. Do you hear better out of your right side?

Frail Old Patient: Yes. Thank you.

Dentist: Sometimes as we age, it becomes harder for us to care for our teeth well. We don't have the dexterity we need to brush and floss, and the build-up causes rapid decay.

Frail Old Patient: ......

Dentist: We'll have to take the teeth out.

Frail Old Patient: Is there any option besides dentures?

Dentist: There are implants, but I'd like to get the teeth out, make some dentures for you, have them ready the day your teeth are removed, and let you try them for a month or two.

Frail Old Patient: Oh. Okay...

Dentist: There is a surgeon in this building, I've sent my wife and my mother to him -- he'll take good care of you, and then I will be there to make sure your dentures fit before you even leave.

At about this point, Polite Hygienist finished scraping and polishing my teeth, and I had an opportunity to talk. "You know," I said, "the braces don't bother me as much as they used to. "

Houston, we have a problem.

After weeks of interviewing, negotiating salary, comparing benefits, weighing pros and cons, and finally slapping my forehead in the realization that there was NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT, I accepted the new job and gave my notice at work this week. While it seems like this act would result in a big sigh of relief, it's actually set off a chain of events that I predict can only end in my blood pressure reaching fatal levels. This is because I have this thing known as a conscience. If I didn't have a conscience, I wouldn't care that my bigwig boss is trying to make a statement by dumping unrealistic deadlines on me; I'd just pack up my things and walk out. My new company would be thrilled if I showed up early, so what's stopping me? Well, to be honest, I don't want to end up in the witness protection program when Mr. Bigwig makes it his personal goal in life to bring me down. As one of my co-worker friends put it, "he knows a lot of people, and he's scary"....which, now that I think about it, begs the question, "why the hell am I writing about this on the internet?" So I'll stop there. Suffice it to say that I'm stuck finishing out the two weeks at work, no matter how much I pre-maturely age in the process.

Here's the really crappy thing about this, though: All this damned work is cutting into my blog time! And I bet my new job will expect a whole eight hours a day out of me as well, so even though I come home after work every day with boundless! energy levels (I always do a cartwheel when I come in the front door, you know) and creativity oozing out of my pores (like when I roll the matchbox cars around with Quinn - what a genius game, how could I ever come up with this after working all day, I am amazing!), I am afraid that my posts may become less frequent for a while. I'm not sure what my new routine will be, or if my head will be so full of exciting new job training tidbits that I won't have anything left to give to the ever-needy, omnipresent internet. We'll just have to wait and see. It's a mystery!

For now, I will have to leave you with an agonizing tale of hardship and grief, a sheer epic saga of tragedy and adventure, a creative flourish, a dramatic masterpiece: When Kristen Got Her Braces.

She began to suspect something was a little "off" when the orthodonist's technician asked her for the second time if she was excited about this day. Mustering up the friendliest answer she could, she replied, "Uh, no! No, I'm not excited about today. In fact, I've been wondering how I can possibly get out of it - any ideas??" The cheery technician didn't even flinch. "She must be used to this type of response," the suspicious patient thought to herself. A few minutes later, as she lay in the reclining death chair looking at ceiling tiles while the cheery technician explained the "indirect bonding method" of putting sharp metal objects on an exposed patient's teeth, she thought to herself that maybe this wouldn't be such a big deal. "Obviously these people have a system, they like to explain things, and that's encouraging. Wait a minute WHAT IS THAT THING WHAT IS THAT HUGE PLASTIC THING TWICE THE SIZE OF MY MOUTH OH MY GOD IS SHE PUTTING THAT IN MY MOUTH WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!!!" She realized the cheery technician was still talking to her: "This is called a cheek retractor! See? And I'm just going to put this into your mouth to hold your cheeks away from your teeth, mmkay?" Once her cheeks were as unnaturally far away from her teeth as possible without the use of a knife, the patient thought the hard part was over. Then, she saw another plastic instrument coming towards her face and she started talking in all caps in her mind again. The cheery technician said, "and so this is to hold your tongue back, so I have to push it back as far as it will go, and also? It suctions? So that your mouth will stay dry.. okay? It'll be kind of loud! Mmmmhmmm, heheh." After the patient fought back the initial gag reflex and convinced her brain that her throat was not fully blocked by her dry, scratchy tongue, she thought, "Now. Now the worst is over. The dryness and the gagging and the huge plastic hands pulling my face inside out has to be the very worst part, and hey! I'm used to that now. Mind over matter." The cheery technician was acting happy as she non-chalantly told the patient she was "just going to polish your teeth first." "WHAT? POLISH MY TEETH, LET'S GET THE GOD-FORSAKEN BRACES ON ALREADY!" She was thinking this, but you see, the contraptions of torture and death kept her from being able to speak. After the polishing, the trays of wax containing her braces were put on, and a futuristic light instrument (kind of like a laser gun, let's call it a laser gun) was used to "activate the glue." She thought since these people were really into technology and futuristic phraseology, that the laser gun would work instantly, perhaps even transporting her forward in time and allowing her to skip all this pesky pain and torture, hell, maybe it would even fast-forward 12 months to the day she was having the metal taken OFF of her teeth! But alas, the special little laser gun didn't work quickly, and actually took repeated applications before the braces stuck to her teeth. Then the wax trays had to be pulled out, and the cheery technician had nothing futuristic to use for this part, so she used a good old-fashioned dentist hook to get the wax trays pulled away from the brackets. But the brackets had just been futuristically melded for all eternity to the patient's stupid mouth, and those wax trays were attached. The cheery technician said, "I bet you're as dry as the desert by now, huh? Gosh, these wax trays just aren't wanting to come out...they kind of like you!" as she puuuullllleeeddd and puuullllleeed on the patient's jaw, making the patient wonder if her teeth were going to come shattering out in fountains of blood, all over the futuristic laser guns and indirect bonding instruments, bloody teeth with braces forever attached to them all over this lovely state-of-the-art office. After the wax trays were out and the patient's jaw was astonishingly only slightly fractured, the cheery technician said, "now we can turn off the suction and take out the cheek retractors - your braces are on and they WILL FEEL WEIRD, but go ahead and go rinse." The patient wasn't ready to look in the mirror and accept her new face, especially since her mouth felt like it was full of forks, can openers, and a pocket knife. But at the sink there was a big mirror and OH MY GOD IT'S AS BAD AS I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE! GET THEM OFF! SOMEONE WAKE ME FROM THIS NIGHTMARE! STOP THE MADNESS! I'M HIDEOUS! LOOK AWAY! She choked back her tears of humiliation and sulked back to the chair thinking, "let's get this over with so I can go home and figure out how to avoid society for a year." Then the orthodontist came to talk: "You did great! These look perfect! Are you excited?" The patient held back her anger and just shook her head in a controlled, slow fashion, with a look that said, "kill me now." The orthodonist chuckled and said, "you'll hate me for a couple of weeks, but I promise you'll get used to them. Now let's take a look - open wide... okay, bite down. Okay, open wide, okay bite down." The patient saw some looks pass between the orthodontist and the cheery technician. She wondered, "why all the biting and opening?" Then the orthodonist explained that her bite was screwed up enough that her top teeth were scraping her bottom braces, which OF COURSE meant that something had to be done to ensure proper progress. The patient wondered what that something was, but she was still pretty happy to have the torture devices out of her mouth, so she assumed nothing too dreadful was coming her way. "Hon, we need to put a little glue on your back teeth to create a different bite, so your braces have room to move your teeth." That didn't sound so bad to the patient, and as the glue was applied, she was starting to calm down about the braces and the ugliness. Once the glue dried, the orthodontist and the cheery technician had the patient bite down again, but the patient discovered TO HER HORROR that she couldn't bite down at all. When she closed her mouth fully, she could still speak completely articulate sentences! Her brain started screaming again: "What have they done to me?! I can't even bite down! I thought I looked like a freak before but now I can't even fully close my mouth I'LL LOOK LIKE SUCH AN IDIOT AT MY NEW JOB, THEY'LL PROBABLY FIRE ME AND THEN I'LL NEVER GET ANOTHER JOB BECAUSE OF MY FREAK MOUTH! I'M A TOTAL PARIAH!" After the cheery technician gave the patient her goody bag of water pics and t-shirts advertising the orthodontist's office, the patient pulled herself together and went back to work. Her co-workers didn't laugh directly at her and were courteous enough to ridicule her only behind her back, saving her the outright embarrassment of it all. She felt some discomfort from the sharp forks stabbing the inside of her stretched out cheeks and her gums, but she was beginning to accept her situation. Then she went to lunch with her husband, and ordered a harmless bowl of rice and beans - soft, mushy food that wouldn't require too much in the way of chewing. And then she discovered it. The worst part hadn't been the laser gun, or the indirect bonding, or the visions of bloody bracket-covered teeth, or the cheek retractor torture chamber. The worst part, the very worst part of this entire experience, the thing that would haunt her from now until she got her real mouth back in a year, was trying to chew the most basic soft, mushy food, the easiest food to start with, the food that will determine how well eating will go for the next few weeks, WHILE HER BACK TEETH ARE FILLED UP WITH A HARDENED, SMOOTH, TOFFEE-LIKE SUBSTANCE. She is an animal, shoveling a bite in, throwing her head back and knocking it around in a futile attempt to break her food into digestible pieces. She is in hell. Pure, utter, indescribable, humiliating HELL.

Return of the Cheeto Gang

I’m getting braces.

My world is crashing down on me. Life as I know it will change FOREVER next week. What was I thinking? How could I have agreed to this? Will I be forced to face the daily agony of being taunted and ridiculed, have I voluntarily submitted to being the butt of my peers’ petty jokes? Because we ARE still in junior high, right? My every nerd-move and physical trait is being observed by the “cheerleaders” and “jocks,” to be humiliatingly twisted and thrown in my face while they gather together as one indiscernible, Guess jean-clad, confidence-shattering mob. Right?

Oh. Maybe you had a different junior high experience. Mine sucked. S-U-C-K-E-D. Actually, to be fair, it wasn’t even the cheerleaders who ridiculed me in junior high (and I apologize for stereotyping any former cheerleaders out there who have since seen the light on treating the quiet, nerdy kids like pond scum – no hard feelings, eh?); I wasn’t even on their radar screen. Some catty group decided I was no longer worthy of joining their oh-so-cool after school gatherings consisting of Little Debbie snacks and convenience store slurpees; after that, my wardrobe, face, hair, or anything externally visible was fair game. One day after they had ostracized me (during which event they told me I could no longer be a part of their group because “my family was too perfect” – nice, especially considering the dysfunctional hellhole I was living in at the time), I was walking in the halls between classes when one of them saw me and yelled out, “hey, Cheeto!” and started giggling uncontrollably with her (formerly my) friend. I’m sure I looked confused, because I had no clue what image the word “Cheeto” actually was supposed to conjure up for me. Had I eaten Cheetos with lunch and did I still have that neon powder on my sleeve? Was it a clever play on words involving “Chester the Cheetah” from the commercials? If so, exactly what was said play? Was it some sly comment on my CHEST? Was it a sarcastic jab at my academic abilities, like, “you must think you’re some kind of intellectual CHEETAH”? How deeply should I have analyzed this clearly genius inside joke? As it turns out, I didn’t have to analyze it at all; the lovely (and witty! Oh so witty!) girls saw my confusion and said, “your eye shadow, DUH! It looks ORANGE!! Like the Cheeto cheese!!” And with that, they cackled off to class. This went on for months.

I’m pretty sure they both wait tables for a living now. Not by choice. They were going to be married to rich men who would obviously shower them with such swank gifts as the highest quality eye shadow ever created. Karma’s a bitch.

For those of you wondering why I launched into a depressing discussion of the WORST YEARS OF MY LIFE and also asking yourself what IN THE NAME OF GOD any of this has to do with getting braces as an adult, well, I’ll tell you: I thought I was just fine with the whole braces thing (except for the $5400 price tag, which will forever haunt my dreams) until I literally woke up in the middle of the night feeling ill and imagining people at my new job not taking me seriously. Or not being able to focus on anything coming out of my mouth because of these shiny metal objects reflecting the canned fluorescent lighting with Every. Single. Syllable.

In my adult brain, I know this is crazy. Plenty of adults have braces; I see adults with braces all the time and I don’t think twice about it. Besides, it’s only a year. It’ll go by in a snap. But I had braces once before, you see, during that time in my life when everything associated with my physical presence was suspect – will this attract too much attention? Am I going to be ridiculed over this? And that little Junior High Humiliation Victim part of me hasn’t died yet. I’m going to beat her to a bloody pulp, though, because if I don’t get these braces, a portion of my gums will have most likely completely receded by the time I’m 50. I’m pretty sure I’m going to live past 50, and I think I’ll still want gums, teeth, and also a jawbone at that time.

So all I can say is this: The first person at my new job who makes a witty comment to me about the braces is going to have a bloody, gnarled stump in place of what used to be their arm. Cheeto Gang, you’d better warn them about that whole karmic retribution thing.

The Titanic Was A Cruise Ship, Too

A year ago, Bryce went to his very first dentist appointment, and this particular dentist's office takes a Disney World approach to introducing kids to the joys of dental health. He was inundated with chipper, bright-eyed female hygienists asking him lots of interesting questions (do you brush your teeth every day?), taking pictures of the inside of his mouth (for fun!! isn't this fun?), letting him pick his own flavor of floss (bubble gum or blueberry?! wow, you get to pick your own!), all in effort to ease him into the luxury cruise ship experience that a dental cleaning can clearly be. By the time we met the dentist, Bryce was in a catatonic state, completely over-stimulated by the fast-paced questions and the goodie bags he clutched while he watched the blaring Nickelodeon station on the TV that was aimed directly at his face, right over the dentist chair. After the cleaning and exam was over, they whisked Bryce to the Toy Area and let him pick a toy and a balloon to take home with him. The cruise and brain-washing was complete. See you in six months, new initiate.

The next visit wasn't so much a cruise as a visit to the circus. There were sights to see and interesting things to consider, but not as many treats or comforts as our first time. He still got a toy and balloon at the end, but there was some flouride swallowing and a long wait for the dentist with a fuzzy TV...so, some less than stellar aspects to our visit dampened his enthusiasm a bit.

Yesterday was his third visit. This time, as the eerily calm hygienist, Sherrie, prepped him for his cleaning, he said, "This isn't my favorite part. My favorite part is at the end when I get a toy." Calm Sherrie chuckled and started the whirring, high-pitched, pulsating instrument slathered with that sandy fruit-flavored teeth-cleaning chemical. Whoah. Hold it right there. Who decided it was okay to use THIS thing? On the previous two visits, the cleanings were done with an innocent toothbrush and some special toothpaste. There was no warning to the kid with the insane gag reflex and TEXTURE ISSUES FROM HELL that he was about to undergo this medieval torture! In some attempt to cooperate, Bryce kept his head still, but his eyes filled up with tears, his fists were clinched into tight little balls, and he alternated between banging his knees and his heels together violently. Calm Sherrie used the water hose to rinse off the sandy residue, but Bryce is still trying to grasp the concept of using the suction hose, so he gagged as he tried not to swallow it, his face turning bright red and his neck craning. "Uh, he's choking!" I told Calm Sherrie. Without looking at me, she said, "that's just what they do, he's fine" with a tone that suggested Bryce was some oblivious dog yelping over shots at the vet: "Oh, he'll be fine, we'll get him a milk bone in just a sec, hon." After the cleaning was done, Bryce was still doing the "there's no place like home" heel-thumping, and it just didn't look right. "Do you need to go to the bathroom, Bryce?" He nodded his head violently, looking at me with panic in his face. I scooped him up and took him to the bathroom down the hall. When we got in there, he gave me an accusatory glare: "I do NOT like it here, Mom! I'm ready to go! And I don't want to come back here EVER AGAIN."

The jig is up, Dr. Smith and Calm Sherrie; you'll never indoctrinate Texture Boy into your Disney Cruise of a dental practice. Nice try, though. And thanks for the balloon.

As an entertaining side note, the dentist asked if I knew whether or not Bryce grinds his teeth in his sleep. He showed me where Bryce had been wearing his teeth down to teeny little nubs, and said, "He may have a little Type A personality going on here." I just chuckled and said, "Oh. You have NO IDEA." He responded with, "well, we won't speculate on where he got that."

Cheeky bastard. See if I bring any more kids on his creepy dental Cruise-Circus-Torture Chamber.