Oldest boy, Cobb had an orthodontist appointment today. He has impacted canine teeth. It turns out that this is a hereditary thing. My uncle also had impacted canines. My uncle is in his 70's so treatment has changed since then. Uncle's only choice was to leave the impacted teeth in place and have false canines bridged in.
Cobb, however, is doing something a little more invasive.
If you are skeeved out by any tooth/dental related stuff....you might want to close this window before you read any further.
Ok....this is your last warning.
I'm totally freaked out by this but I have to remain very stoic about the whole thing. I don't want to freak the kid out.
I just know that if it were going to happen to me....I would be freaking out all over the place.
Ok...here it is. The poor boy has to go to a periodontist. This doc will cut Cobb's gums where his canines should be. Then he'll go in and "explore" to find the teeth. Once he finds them he will glue a bracket to each canine. We've seen the x-rays and those canines are way up by his incisor roots. So that bracket will be about 1/4 inch or more into the boy's gums. A wire will be attached to the bracket and that will be left sticking out while his gums heal.
A week later, he'll go back to the orthodontist. He will attach the wire to Cobb's braces. Each week the wire will be tightened like a wench to pull the canine tooth down into position.
(Shudder)
The whole procedure will take about 6 weeks.
And they haven't even started with the jaw growth stuff yet. I'm really hoping that he won't end up with jaw surgery on top of this.
Poor kid.
Did I mention he is having all this done before he goes off for a week to Boy Scout Camp?
Poor, poor kid.
3 comments:
OUCH! Poor kid. I hurt for him.
You wanna know what's really weird? I have a friend here who's 14 year old daughter just had this done a few weeks ago. She's 'Dragonfly Days' on my blog roll if you want to see how that went.
I had exactly the same procedure done when I was 20 to my right canine...I still had the baby tooth so it had to be surgically removed and then the adult canine had to be found, the "button" glued on, gum stitched and then the slow agonizing rubberbanding to get that stupid tooth down. That was the most painful part of my whole orthodontic adventure and that includes a sagittal that I had to spread every three days and that covered my top molars, making it very hard to eat. They couldn't bandage it, so I had to wear a big ball of antiseptic wax in the front of my mouth, that looked apallingly like a piece of chewed gum for about a week.
I feel your son's pain. And yours!
mere
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