So the last 24 hours haven’t been my best, but I’ve been doing my best to make them better (if that makes sense.)
The diving classes that I mentioned were indeed canceled, which makes me sad. I was looking forward to getting the certification process started, but there wasn’t enough interest and the co-ordinator wasn’t able to get a hold of all the interested parties. Hopefully there will be something offered later this fall, though. That may be a blessing in disguise, because money is a little tight right now and dropping $125 on the course may not have been the best idea.
Money is tight right now because I just had two (count ‘em, two) dentist appointments in less than 12 hours. I went in for a consultation yesterday so that I could discuss the restorative work that I’m going to need done and work out a treatment plan with my new dentist back up north here.
That was a mixed bag of information.
I’ve had terrible teeth my entire life. I have some kind of disorder, and have since birth, that makes my enamel super weak. It chips off like old paint. Very irritating, to say the least, and at 23 every single one of my teeth has some kind of addition to it. Every. Single. One.
I was teased relentlessly about it in junior high school, ’cause children from the ages of 11-14 are generally assholes (I say this with a light tone of mocking, but seriously, wasn’t everyone miserable in junior high?). At 17, my grandmother passed away and with the settlement we received from her estate my parents decided that I was finally ready for some of the major restorative work we’d been putting off until I reached adulthood.
Now that university is done, I’m ready to pick up where I left off. I currently have nine (yes, nine) crowns, and three need replacing (they’re between four and six years old, so I’m a little ticked). I also want to add more crowns to give my teeth some stability. Things I’ve chipped my teeth on include: nothing, gum, pizza, more nothing, night grinding, and carrots.
And then came the bad news from the dentist. She wants to refer me to an orthodontist before I start the crown work, ’cause my teeth are all messed up. This shouldn’t be a big surprise to me, since the first dentist I saw at 17 did the exact same thing, and I know I need braces. But it was a smack in the face to hear it again at 23. And a punch to the wallet. Braces are freaking expensive, and she said that I’d be wearing them for three years. Oh, and between years two and three, I should consider jaw surgery to correct my misaligned bite. Surgery?! This is a new twist! I know my bite is all messed up, but it’s never really truly bothered me.
After all of this is done, then we’d start on the crown work. Oy.
She said “So, you’re 23 correct? Well, that means you should have the smile you want by 27 or 28.” And that’s when I started crying. I admit it, I shed many tears. To hear that it’s so much more involved, so much more expensive, so much more painful to get to where I want to be…ouch. In all ways, ouch.
I went to my parents’ house for them to sign an insurance form, and cried some more. I went home to Thomas and cried a lot more.
But I woke up this morning and felt a lot more collected. Then came my second dentist visit. I needed to fix a chip in one of my back molars, and was back in that exact same chair by 8am. Two shots of Novocaine and some filler later, and my tooth has been restored. She doesn’t seem super concerned about my teeth deteriorating while I’m realigning them, so I’m trying not to worry about all the crowns I can’t get yet.
The Novocaine was a wicked dose too, ’cause to work on just one tooth I don’t think it should take 5+ hours to have it wear off. I was very Jean Chretien-like for the morning here at work, and I’ll freely admit a miserable bitch until I was able to (carefully!) slurp up my morning coffee. I treated myself to McDonald’s for lunch, because I can. Also as a reward for getting myself to the dentist two days in a row, despite my fear of dental work (can you blame me at this point?).
So there’s a consult with an orthodontist in my future, and I’m thinking that I’m going to try to go the route of Invisalign. I don’t think my tooth enamel would withstand three years of braces and while it won’t correct my bite, it will help to align my teeth properly and make a more stable base for my crowns. That’s all I really need at this point.
Ugh. The most expensive things I’ll have invested in before I’m 30 will be my education and my mouth. That’s a weird thing to realize.
