Greg and the girls had their regular Dentist appointments this week so as you can imagine, my garbage cans are filled with mangled balls of bloodied dental floss. I suspect the Dentist and his team have never seen such clever non-flossers cram six month’s worth of filing into four days as a means to trick the staff into thinking they are regulars.
That’s not the only trickery that goes on at the Dentist office. There’s a lot of whispering, note taking and speaking in code going on behind the offensive sun-glass wearing screenings of Hannah Montana’s latest film.
This week, we received a notice of referral for an orthodontist for our seven year old. The orthodontist office is named after two brothers which was my first clue that something was amiss. I’m not saying the Ringling Brothers or the Brothers Grimm haven’t set the stage for brothers the world over to go into business together, I’m just not sure I want either of them working on my seven year olds’ teeth.
So the offices of Plaque & Plaque want to have a look at Hanna’s mouth based on the following diagnosis from our family Dentist.
“55 & 65 preventing upper 6’s from erupting, should we EXO 55 & 65 & send point back for distilization of upper 6’s”
I realize this note is not meant for me to understand and shouldn’t make any sense to those outside of the oral industry, but when you’re talking about the health of your child you want to feel as though you are well informed.
From what I can make out, 55 & 65 are not allowing the upper 6’s to erupt which doesn’t sound very nice, can’t they all just get along? Anytime someone uses a word like “erupting” pertaining to your child’s mouth, I think it’s fair to say any parent would be concerned. I also don’t like “EXO” which I assume is code for “YANK them out while impersonating a scary pirate.”
They tried to explain to Greg that her jaw is small, her teeth are big but I wonder if modern medicine is jumping the gun when it comes to our young kids. Her adult teeth haven’t even come in fully, nothing has erupted and therefore I’m not sure I want anything EXO’d just yet. At seven, isn’t it fair to assume a small jaw will in fact get bigger? Call me crazy but at twenty, her seven year old jaw would look a little out of place and therefore I could see someone wanting to take action at that point. Should we consider just rolling the dice?
I also take offence to people who assume you know what they are talking about based on their area of education and expertise like the guy pointing out that we did in fact have an anti-tipping device already installed on our stove. Oh right, I must have forgotten the day we covered anti-tipping installation in my fourth year 17th Century poets class. I don’t point out the iambic pentameter in their phrasing or suggest they should have added a question mark at the end of “should we EXO the upper 6’s” ?????
And what about the gorgeous x-ray they flap in front of those of us they sense might fear they are being fed a mouth full of Chicklets? Ah, is that my kid’s mouth? That’s one for the scrapbook. I’m fully aware, it could be the interior lip-lining of a Snowy Owl but I’m going to nod in agreement while their skinny, metal tool points at those pesky 55’s and 65’s and my God the potential eruption.
I’m not suggesting modern technology hasn’t come a long way since we were kids, I’m merely throwing it out there kids are having teeth pulled pretty early these days and from what I can remember, Fangs McGee had a stable and happy childhood before having any major work done to shave things down to size.
