Could It Happen?
By Braceface2015
This morning I had an appointment to get a filling replaced and a cavity that was just starting to appear, filled. I had been getting headaches for a while, so I had been to my doctor and he had given me some pills to take if the pain got too bad. He had also suggested that I see the dentist, as he figured that my teeth might be the source of the pain. The pain would start at the side of my neck near the point where my jaws connected and spread until it ran up the side of my head to behind my eyes.
I live in a small town in the mountains, with a few larger towns about a half hours drive away and a small city an hour away. Years ago, a small business complex was built and a dentist moved in. Not long after, a dental lab moved in so that they could service the towns nearby rather than spend more money to set up in labs in all the towns around us. They had a good reputation among all the dentists and orthodontists around us for doing excellent work, and they were also fast, often able to do same day or next day orders for their business clients. Most of the dental and orthodontic businesses closed their own labs and just used the lab in our town.
Being a small town, the business complex had the doctor, the dentist, the dental lab and other medical professionals in it, including an orthodontist who came in a few days a week and shared the office with the dentist, since they used much of the same equipment.
Since they were all in the same building, it was easy for them to share information, especially since the receptionists did the appointment scheduling and file handling for all of them. I could book all of my appointments for the same day and I could go from one appointment to the next with hardly any wait time between appointments. There were times where they needed to consult with each other about a patients care.
The entrance to the offices is in the middle of the main floor, with the waiting room in the center of the building. The doctor is on the one side and the dentist and orthodontist on the other, which is convenient for all of them. The dental lab is on the floor above them. Since the lab doesn't get many visitors, it just uses the receptionists to handle the incoming and outgoing packages.
That is how I ended up here today. I had seen the dentist a couple of times and it was decided that I had a couple of teeth that needed the fillings replaced. They had already done the X-rays and taken impressions of both my upper and lower jaws. When the orthodontist had seen the records, she had suggested that the alignment of my jaws might be part of the problem as well.
When I woke up this morning, I had a bad headache, so I took one of the pills and skipped breakfast, laying in bed before heading to my dental appointment. I don't live far from the office, so I usually just walk there, which is what I did today. When I walked in today, the doctor was at the desk and asked how I was doing. I replied that, "I woke up with a headache and took a pill. I feel a little sleepy, but am feeling a bit better now."
Before I can even sit down, the receptionist says, “There are a couple of insurance forms to sign and then you can go right in. We had a cancellation and can get you in early. Make yourself comfortable and they will have you started in no time at all.”
I had been told that it would be a long appointment and that they would take a couple of breaks partway through the appointment. The plan was to give me a mild sedative before they numbed my mouth. One of the forms was a medical consent form confirming that I was agreeing to the recommended treatment as determined by the Dentist. I signed all the forms and was escorted back to the chair by the cute dental assistant.
I was a bit surprised to see that it was the girl who works with the orthodontist, but she did help out the dentist too if she wasn't busy. She did give me a nice smile and I saw that she had just gotten braces. I had seen her around town from time to time and the last time I had talked to her, she had commented that she had been offered free treatment after she had worked for the orthodontist for a while.
After she got me settled in the chair, I asked her, “When did you get your braces? They look new.”
"She just put them on last week. I was given the option of what type of braces I wanted. I looked at the different types of brackets and, after talking to quite a few patients, both present and former, decided on these." She gave me a big smile, letting me get a good look at them. "They aren't the fancy new brackets that have the little doors on them. I wanted the older kind that have the ligatures that hold the wire in. In my opinion, they just look better and the ligatures are easier to change. I can even change them myself if I want to. I ordered some brighter colours for myself." She gave me another smile, letting me take another look. "I can even put two colours on each bracket if I want or twist them so that they form an 'X' on the bracket."
She looked so happy with and about her new braces, a big smile on her face as she started setting things out for my appointment. “Are you ready for the sedative? They have you scheduled for quite a bit of work. I see that it might be a root canal on the one tooth because of the size of the filling already there. And I see that the dentist has asked my boss to take a better look at how your teeth are lining up.”
"If they can figure out some way to stop these headaches, I will be so happy for them to fix it." She gave me the pill and I popped it into my mouth and swallowed it. I laid my head against the headrest and she reclined the chair, then got me to open my mouth while she checked my teeth. I was already feeling relaxed from the pill that I had taken earlier in the morning and her bright, metal-bracketed smile was helping to relax me even more. "What is your favourite ligature colour? I have always liked black and silver. Black just seems to make them stand out so much more and silver makes it look as if there is so much more metal in the mouth. I like how your brackets look." My speech began to slur as the sedative started to take effect.
I listened as she began to tell me, "I don't think that I have a favourite colour. I want to have bright colours, ones that show that I have braces and that I am not ashamed of them. I want people to.....," and that is the last thing that I remembered for a while. I have vague recollections of someone shaking me gently and asking me to open my mouth. That was followed by something poking into my jaw and then a numb feeling settled in and something was placed between my jaws and my cheeks to keep my mouth open.
I partially woke up one time to hear a voice asking, “Do you have a band that will fit over this premolar? The adjustable one that I usually use is broken. I would rather use one of yours than have the tooth crack.”
An older female voice replies, “The only bands that I have are the ones with brackets on them. Will that be okay?”
A male voice replies, “It will have to do. It might be better than using mine anyways. I can just leave it on for a while to stabilize the tooth and let the filling completely harden.” Then I drift off to sleep again.
The next thing I remember is the metal-clad smile of the assistant looking down at me. “We are done with the first tooth.” Then I vaguely recall her asking me to open and close my jaw. “Keep doing that and let me know if there is any pain or discomfort,” she says, “the orthodontist wants to check if there is a misalignment in your jaw.” I think I did it a few times, but don't remember how many times I did. There was someone else talking to me, but I don't know what was said. I think I just agreed with whatever was asked and drifted back to sleep and began to dream.
It was a strange dream. For the first while, it was all about a bug buzzing inside my mouth. It seemed strange because it kept pressing on my teeth, but I didn't feel anything.
Then this beautiful angel, with metal sparkles glinting off her teeth, asked me to bite down on a stick several times. She just kept smiling at me and I couldn't take my eyes off of her mouth, she just looked so pretty. I kept trying to tell her how much I liked her smile, but my mouth wouldn't work right. I couldn't seem to close my lips and everything seemed to be stretched tight around my mouth.
There was a bitter taste a few times, but my angel would spray water into my mouth and then suck the bitter taste away. It seemed as if she would move her hands over my face and a breeze blew across my teeth, drying them. Her hand would disappear and when it reappeared, it would be holding a silver star which she placed into my mouth. She would hold it against a tooth until it stuck and then pick up another star and do it again. Eventually there was a blue sunrise and I fell asleep again.
I must have been asleep for quite a while, because the next thing I remember is my angel gently shaking me and smiling her metal smile at me. I realize that the angel is really the orthodontic assistant and that she definitely does have a beautiful smile, one that I sort of envy. From where I am laying, I can see how the wire runs through the brackets with little bends in it where her teeth are out of alignment.
“Wow. You were really out of it. When you fell asleep and we had a hard time waking you up, we called the Doctor. He said that you had taken something earlier and that, combined with what we gave you, it had knocked you out. Since you were already here and sedated, we should just do what needed to be done. You had already signed the forms authorizing treatment and the insurance company had approved more funds than we expected to need. He said just to let you sleep and that you would wake up on your own.”
I am still not that awake, so I try to smile back at her and form some sort of coherent answer. My mouth feels weird, not actually numb, more as if it is puffy and stiff. I blink a few times to try to clear the cobwebs from my mind.
"Just lay there for a while. I don't know how much you remember? We replaced the big filling first. That one took us a while. We used a band on that one to help keep it from cracking. We decided to leave it on for a while, so we had to use one that had a bracket on it."
I don't really pay attention to what she has just said.
“After that, we did a couple of small cavities that were just starting to show. That went quickly. Then my boss decided to take a look at your teeth and jaws. She had looked at your records and thought that there might be an alignment problem. When she checked out your mouth, she found that there were several things that should be corrected."
My mind is gradually clearing and I am becoming more aware of how my mouth feels. I try to move my mouth from side to side to ease some of the stiffness I feel, but there is something limiting the movement.
"She found that your lower jaw was slightly too far back and that you tended to push it forward and to the side to try to get everything to line up. It is also slightly wider than the top which is why you are pushing your jaw to the side. All this is causing your muscles to ache and could be giving you headaches."
I just nod that I understand. My mouth still doesn't want to work. I try to open it but something seems to be restricting the effort. It doesn't seem to be worth the effort right now, so I just relax and listen to her some more.
"After checking with the insurance company, it was determined that you have a great insurance plan that covers medically necessary procedures completely. The Doctor, Dentist and Orthodontist all had a discussion and decided that treatment would be necessary. It was decided that your jaws needed to be trained to stay in line with each other. The orthodontist advised using a fixed device rather than a removable one, that way you can't just pop it out whenever it becomes too annoying."
“The next problem was that you tended to bite on one side more than the other because of the way your teeth meet. Both sides line up fairly good, but with your upper jaw being slightly narrower, they don't line up at the same time. The suggestion was made that the teeth could be ground slightly to make the ridges match better, but it was felt that it was not a long-term solution. The best solution would be to widen your jaw enough to line everything up. After some discussion of the various options, including the possibility of surgery, a solution was proposed. Something to gradually widen the upper jaw was selected.”
“They were going to get a device made up and install it as your treatment progressed. They had already called a technician from the lab upstairs to come and look at your file. When she came down and heard what was being discussed, she told them that she had an upper expander on her table and could have it ready to install today, as long as she had the models to work with. After she heard that they were going to install a Herbst appliance to train your muscles to react differently, she suggested using the bands for the expander to fasten the Herbst into place on the top.”
Much of what she is saying is still not quite registering on my drowsy mind. I keep hearing the word treatment, followed by technical terms. There is a strange taste in my mouth and I am finally able to mumble out a request for something to drink. My Angel, also known as the orthodontic assistant, gets me something to drink from the fridge and raises the back of my treatment chair to an upright position. Seeing that I am still not quite coordinated, she puts the straw into the juice-box and hands it to me. I give her a small smile and slip the straw between my puffy lips. It feels as if they are catching on something, but there is nothing on the outside of my face for them to catch on, nothing that I can see.
As I sip on the liquid through the straw, she continues explaining what has been happening. “In order for the treatment to be successful, it was decided that they would fix your teeth into their current position and make any adjustments to the alignment as needed during treatment. At first they were going to wait for a while to start and then do one thing at a time, but after some debate about where to start, they decided that they couldn't do that. All the movement should be done at the same time to get everything to line up properly.”
When I try to swallow, there seems to be something getting in the way of my tongue. I move my tongue around in my mouth and find something stuck to the roof of my mouth. When I follow it to the end, I feel it attached to metal bands on the back of my teeth. I move my tongue to the other side and feel the same thing. Things start to come together in the back of my mind, but they don't seem to be making sense yet.
"You were still asleep in the chair and we couldn't get you to wake up. When I did finally get you to respond to me, she asked you if you were ready to continue treatment to stop the headaches, and you seemed to agree. She didn't have a busy afternoon, so she decided that today would be a good time to start. After she confirmed that the lab would have the expander and Herbst ready, she had me start to install the molar-bands on your lower jaw. Whenever I asked you to bite down, you did."
I run my tongue over the inside of my bottom teeth, finding that there seem to be quite a few more than two metal bands. I begin to count, but lose track after I reach five.
“You seemed to be waking up for a while as I was working on you, but drifted off again before I finished. My boss was going to use those smaller, self-ligating Damon brackets, but I remembered our discussion about my braces from earlier and just used the same type that I have. It was difficult for me to decided between the black ligatures and the silver, but with all the bands and other metal-work that you have, the silver wouldn't really stand out, so I did the bottom with black.”
"By the time I had the bottom brackets cured and the wire installed, they had the expander ready. That took me a bit longer to install, since I had to do four bands at the same time. I had already banded the back molars and the spacers had made just enough room to get the bands on the front molar and premolar. They had already adjusted the expander to fit the model that they had, so it was just a matter of getting the bands to slip into place. I used the same brackets on the top that I used on the bottom. I debated about using a different colour on the top, but you looked so good with black on the bottom that I did the top to match."
This time, when I run my tongue over my top teeth, things become clearer. I can feel the bands covering the back of my teeth. The things that she has been saying are making sense to me.
"I had to wait a while for the glue to cure a little longer before I installed the pistons for the Herbst. They made it so that it will restrict the side to side motion to a minimum while still guiding your lower jaw forward. While I was waiting, I put elastics between all of your front teeth to keep your mouth from opening. You don't actually have to wear that many. For the beginning of your treatment, you won't have any, but that will probably change as your teeth begin to shift."
That explains why I can't open my mouth more. I try to open my mouth enough to get my tongue through, but encounter a wall of elastics across the front of my mouth. I look at her smiling at me, at all the sparkle that is showing and the pink of her ligatures holding the wire in. It really is a beautiful sight.
"I had just finished installing the pistons when you started to wake up this time. Would you like to see what has been done? I hope that it won't be too much of a shock."
I am finally awake enough to part my lips and lisp out a weak, “Yeth,” between my imprisoned teeth. She holds up a mirror in front of my face and puts her face beside mine so that she can angle it so that I can see my reflection. She grins at me in the mirror and I hesitantly return it, not quite sure what to think of how I look.
“Let me get rid of those elastics. They shouldn't be there anyway.”
I part my lips, expecting her to just cut them, but instead she uses her fingers to remove them one at a time. It probably takes longer doing it this way, but I am enjoying having her touching me like this. As she gets farther back in my mouth, I am able to open a little more with each elastic that she removes until she has removed the last one.
“Let's get you up and over to the mirror on the wall. Do you think that you are steady enough to stand? You can hold onto me if you need to.”
I smile at her and try to stand up after swinging my legs over the edge of the chair. She takes my hand and gently pulls me to my feet. Together we walk to the mirror and stand there side by side, looking at what has been done to my teeth. The shock of how I look now begins to wear off as I turn from side to side, getting a good look at all the metal in my mouth.
“Everyone else has gone home already. I volunteered to stay and look after you until you were ready to leave. How about I give you a ride home? I don't think that you are quite ready to be left on your own just yet. I think that you could use a little company this evening, just to help you recover.”
She is right, I could definitely use some company, especially company that has such a beautiful sparkly smile. As we walk to the front doors and lock up the entrance to the office, I can't stop smiling at her.
The end. For now.
