Orthodontia and beyond

This is possibly meant only for me, just for the family history archives.  So maybe take a break and check back next time.  Really, you’ll see.

I’m pretty sure it was 4^th grade when Mrs. Wendling thought it would be a good idea to have us make silhouettes for our parents out of black construction paper, glued to a neutral background.  Yikes.  I hated it from the moment I saw it.  It looked all wrong, my top teeth stuck out.  Not even that, my whole jaw was misaligned.

I suppose it was also around this age that my sisters and I stretched out paper clips to make pretend braces.  Didn’t any of you?  So began my fascination (or at least association) with mouth gear.  I always wanted braces.  Looking back, why a kid would ever hope for them is beyond me. But when my uncle-dentist talked in hushed-tones to my mom in his office one day about an overbite, I listened both carefully and apprehensively. It would finally be my turn to experience braces first-hand.  But given my luck, for some reason my case was too complicated for the normal, every-other-kid variety of orthodontic work.

I don’t remember the exact order of events, but around 5-6^th grade all the fun began.  With impressions.  Most of you have had these I assume.  What could be worse?  A larger-than-you’d-anticipate, thin, metal tray filled with a thick, cold, wet, cement-in-embryo concoction, efficiently (quickly and with pressure) pushed into the upper jaw so teeth can imbed themselves for maybe half an hour or so, making an exact mold.  Just teasing.  Maybe only a minute.  A super long minute.  While you just hold yourself together and try to remember what you know about breathing.  And use all your will-power and stamina to not throw up.  And repeat.  With the lower set.  It sounds like no big deal.  But it’s pretty awful.  You probably have no idea if you have a strong gag reflex until this exact moment.  But then you’ll know for sure for next time. 

These impressions aided in the fitting for some appliance called a bionator.  It’s worse than it sounds.  Like a huge mouth guard with metal and plastic components, it hovered in the middle of my top and lower jaws, just like an overgrown retainer.  Another apparatus during this time period was head-gear. Not just neck gear, but an entire helmet with fabric straps fitted with metal bands to hold your mouth in place.  I was supposed to wear it at night and after school, but I opted to sometimes wear it to daycare since I was there til 5:30 or so at night, to be efficient and to be done with it asap.  As much as I like to share detail with you, I can’t even tell you how splendid this phase of my early life was.

And then things kind of stopped.  I have no idea why.  But I was left with two brackets around my back molars with small tubes sticking out into my cheek sockets, for the head gear to slide into.  Residual souvenirs of old-bionator-head-gear times.  Until one day, long after the appliance days were done, my kind uncle-dentist sought to remove them.  With effort.  What relief!  And so I carried on through jr. high and high school without much more than cavities to fill.  At one point there was talk of breaking my jaw and having a 6-week liquid-only diet.  I honestly can’t recall if this was back in the early days or at this next junction.  But at some point I was in the impression chair again being fitted, this time for the retainer.  And you all know how gross retainers are.  Just say the word.  We don’t even have to talk about it. 

But before I knew it I was 20 and for some reason I was back in the saddle.  Or at least the chair.  Making the journey to a small town in southern Utah with my cousin and her kids to see an orthodontist once a month.  I have no idea how this came to be or who arranged it or why my mouth issues were revisited.  I straddled both adult and kid worlds at this point.  But in this regard I was completely a kid.  I joined my extended family for our monthly outing and was finally fitted with braces.  Why now after all these years and why they would all of a sudden work, again, I have no idea.

But as a precursor to braces I had yet other fantastic experience.  I don’t even know if there’s a proper name for it, but it was like a rake on the roof of my mouth, several small prongs, like the set you’re afraid to back up over in your car in a covered parking lot exit.  But these never laid down like the ones you run over.  Not even worth pointing out, but eating was close to impossible.  Talking was impossible.  What a miserable month.  It was during this memorable period that I met my college roommate’s family for the first time and stayed with them for a long weekend.  I didn’t make much of an impression.  In case you’re wondering what was going on, this appliance was to train my tongue to stop pushing against the back of my top front teeth.  So I guess it worked.  I have oodles of will power; I totally would’ve taken the assignment seriously if only I’d been given a chance to work things out on my own.  Just another humbling, feeling-good-about-myself-month in the life of Caren.

Once I passed that test and got my real braces all I could think about was how much it all hurt.  My lips, my cheeks, my teeth muscles.  Just my whole mouth.  I couldn’t get past the fact that half the teenagers in the U.S. wear braces (I have no idea what the real number is).  What were they all smiling about?  And how did they go about their everyday lives without talking about the pain or how hard it was to eat?  My lips would get hung up on them.  I had that funny pout that girls with braces have.  I felt very conspicuous.  Who else gets braces in the middle of college?  I knew no one.  But I continued to make the monthly trek to the orthodontist, and—oddly enough—I only had them on for about a year.  Strangest thing.  But I was fitted for yet another retainer.  I still have it, way back in the recesses of my top shelf, in a bright pink-from-the-90s-plastic case.

I’ve never liked my teeth, but I suppose they became a bit straighter.  And for that, I am truly grateful.  I still vow to never get a silhouette done again.

Fast-forward to maybe three years ago maybe.  I found myself reliving my nightmares.  Unfortunately I discovered that not much had changed over the past 20 or so years since I’d last had impressions.  Just as bad as I’d remembered.  Only this time they were to aid my dentist in creating yet another interesting apparatus for my mouth: a night guard.  But I was still clenching so hard even with it that I’d wake up with an aching jaw.  So then we repeated the whole process and settled on a smaller, more compact little appliance about an inch long that just sits in between my top and bottom front four teeth. Which reminds me of a mini-bionator from my olden-days.  So embarrassing, I feel like an old lady.  Is there anything less attractive than night-time teeth assistants?  I told my dentist for years that I didn’t have stress.  I’m not the uptight person I used to be, and yet I knew I clenched when I wasn’t looking.  I can’t even use my well-developed will-power in this arena; I just see it as one of the many indicators of my age.  And as some deep-seated secret my subconscious is keeping from me.

I had just one more interesting mouth experience exactly one year ago.  Pretty common, quite fascinating procedure:  gum grafting.  I had recessive gum tissue in two spots—I bet most of you do too—and so I had the awesome opportunity of having the top of my roof sliced open on both sides, some tissue removed and then sewn onto my thin gums.  I felt like I might choke to death (a lot like the impressions) as I reclined with my mouth obviously wide open, with the aid of little mouth “pillows” for an hour and a half.  My mouth and cheeks swelled like they would with wisdom teeth (which I forgot to mention I had removed just a few years back—also as an adult, such a late bloomer in so many ways…).  It was Todd’s birthday.  I drove myself to and from the appointment, went on visits right afterward as well as that night with the church ladies.  My partner asked what on earth was going on with my jaw and I told her about my oral surgery.  It was fine for the most part.  Until I tried to chew a piece of gum about an hour after I left the appointment.  Kind of dumb idea.  Rough week.

I know of no one who would think that private mouth experiences would be good fodder for an essay.  Yet, with the percentage of teens having had braces, you just might relate to some of this.  I can't think of any other reason you would read it.  I also know my oral issues are far from over.  I have another weak gum area they’re watching, the parts I had done will need to be repeated in the future, I’m sure my cavities from my kid-days are due to be replaced, I snore and I’m scared my teeth are forever undoing themselves from all the orthodontics in my past.  But I can’t fathom how on earth I’m to wear a retainer, night guard, and future CPAP machine, along with my eye mask, all at the same time.

Maybe we just pick and choose which problem to focus on at the moment rather than trying to deal with them all at once.  Maybe I let some go or I pack a few at a time up on the top shelf, along with my retainer from the 90s.  So I choose to have a jaw that doesn’t hurt in the morning, and if it’s really light then I like a little mask to keep me in my sleeping state.  It's funny that all those stressful impression-taking-appointments and awkward years of wearing braces and head gear and spikes in my mouth seem like a million years ago.  I even forget sometimes that I had my wisdom teeth removed just a few years back.  And believe it or not, it sometimes slips my mind that I endured gum grafting just a year ago.  Time has a way of softening the pain, of giving us perspective.  I’m grateful for the trials of painful gums and cheeks; I can empathize with other teens and adults who are having mouth work done.  It’s been humbling, and—looking back—I’m glad for the experiences; they helped me not obsess about looks (because there was never anything attractive about any part of it) and to look beyond the outward appearances of others, whether they’ve got metal in their mouths, on their legs or they're riding on a metal wheelchair.  We’ve all got things we’re working through.

So yeah, sometimes life is akin to getting impressions all over: every now and then I feel like I can’t breathe, that the uncomfortable feeling has been going on too long, that I’ll be permanently stuck in this position, or that the person in charge has lost track of time and has forgotten me.  Sometimes it feels prickly, like my prongs.  There are moments in time when I feel like everything I do is impaired, just like when I couldn’t eat or talk properly.  I feel like closing up and hiding out, hoping no one will notice me.  There are times when I open my mouth and it’s awkward, I feel like it’s all just a jumble, just like the month I lived with those spikes.  Sometimes I feel so noticed, like when I had silvery braces—or worse—rubber bands on top of braces.  I couldn’t smile and still blend in.  Sometimes I still feel like I stick out, like I can’t help but be noticed, whether it’s my weird ideas about recycling or water conservation or not being a doting mom, the strange book preferences I have, my innate desire to be alone sometimes, the ways my religious convictions shape the way I live.  Sometimes I feel just as uncomfortable as I did when I had braces. Maybe we’re all a little self-conscious once in awhile. And sometimes you just endure a short but painful period of gum grafting, a couple of years of teeth straightening, a little refining.  Though uncomfortable, humbling, and even painful, just as most of the hard things we endure in life, it’s all been worth it.   Eventually we move on and the innards of our cheeks and gums and hearts heal, and in the end we’re actually glad we did it.  Because it all made us a better version of our former selves.