#my dentist literally commended me last month

[hotmess-exe]

I have so much fucking dental work in 2 hours...

[talldrink-o-h2o]

Fashion: Dental Care

I really like to compete on the dumb things, especially when there’s a good chance I’ll win. For instance, I love to know what people’s eye prescription is. Most can compete with my left eye’s -4.25, but then I tell them my right eye’s -8.25, and I win every time. But because that’s not really a competition anyone wants to win and I don’t want to hear another scary Lasik story (do you know they keep you awake and others can sit and watch?), I’ve switched to dental history.

Sure, you’ve had braces. Oh, maybe you had a cavity or two. But let me tell you my laundry list of what’s happened in my mouth starting in 2nd grade.

I have a small jaw which was causing crowding in my permanent teeth. So in second grade, I started on my first dental device, a palette expander, which is cemented to four of your back teeth and has a plastic center that rests against the roof of your mouth. In the middle of the plastic is a slot for a key. Every night, the key is inserted into the slot and turned twice. Each turn expands the device in your mouth and, in turn, expands your jaw. I was seven, so my mom had to do the key turning. I wore this for several months.

Because it didn’t do enough the first time, I had to have the palette expander a second time. It was around this time that I was also prescribed glasses. It’s no wonder that with my height, I was recruited for basketball in fourth grade and not scouted to model.

In sixth grade, I was finally ready for braces, which I had for two years. Thankfully, I never wore full headgear, but I did go through a period of time where I had rubber bands that connected my top set of teeth to my lower set, thus limiting the motion of my jaw. Try opening your mouth after sleeping with those in. It’ll wake you right up from the pain.

At some point in middle school, I killed one of my front teeth. Literally. I was playing basketball, went in for a layup, and came down on some girl’s head. That pushed the tooth up against its root and killed the nerve. It was only when I went to the dentist after moving to Minnesota and my tooth had started to gray that my new dentist told me it was dead: I’d need a root canal. He told me it’d be painless because my tooth was dead. To prove his point, he then took hot ice, put it on a live tooth (I screamed) and then put it on my dead tooth (where I felt nothing). Point made.

During the root canal, that same dentist let me watch on the screen while he performed the procedure. Spoiler alert, much like not wanting to watch someone’s corneas get cut into during Lasik, you don’t want to see medical devices going through your tooth: it’s not natural. I looked anyway.

Post-root canal, that same dentist put a porcelain composite veneer on my tooth to cover any of the gray that still showed through. Basically, it’s a permanent shirt on my tooth. It turns out that the combination of my vanity and my constant need to please people means you can convince me of any dental procedure (in fairness, I pretty much needed them all). Someone recently pointed out that my tooth is thick, which, unlike a comment on a woman’s hind quarters, I don’t believe was a compliment, but thick is better than gray.

Because I lost both of my retainers some time in college, my teeth started to crowd again. I got Invisalign, or braces for adults. I’m pretty sure I sold more than one woman on the product in the General Mills’ bathroom, where I would go before and after eating any meal.

Speaking of which, the perks at General Mills were great. They had a dentist on site that was free, as in, didn’t-charge-insurance free. I would get four cleanings a year, twice with the on-site guy, and twice with my root canal guy. But then I left that company for Target. The root canal dentist, who was close to General Mills’ offices, was now about 25 minutes away by car. On top of that, every time I went it, the appointment would be at least two hours long, with the x-rays, the veneers, the cleanings, the moldings for retainers, etc. I would literally spend half a day at the dentist. After a life spent in a dental chair, I vowed no more. Rather than find a new dentist, I stopped going altogether.

Recently, however, I felt something calling me back to the dentist. I struggled internally about going to my old dentist. There was the loyalty to the place but that was ultimately outweighed by the likelihood that I’d be sold on yet another procedure. And, okay, maybe the guilt that I hadn’t been there in a while. Ultimately, I decided to go someplace new, walking distance from work. I called to make an appointment. They followed up with my old dentist to get my records so when I showed up for my appointment, they had all my dental history.

It didn’t mean I didn’t have to get X-Rays. And not just the normal four; this was the 7-year x-ray that included 16 shots, where the very talkative hygienist rearranged bite guards throughout my mouth to get every angle of my teeth. When she finished, she commended me, “Good job! You’re way better at that than most people.” She glanced at the X-rays on the screen and added. “But I guess that’s because you’ve had a lot of dental work, so you’re used to it by now.”

When my new dentist came in, she commented on my last cleaning was. “According to the charts, it was just over three years ago.” I had taken the four cleanings a year and let that carry me for the next three.

“Well, that’s not too bad,” she said continued. “The worst I’ve had was 50.”

So there is one competition I’m proud not to have won.