…when shall they two meet again…
Thursday was spent on the road. All day. Driving. Well, I stopped to get out of the car in 1 hour incriments (1 hour evaluation in Los Gatos, 1 hour lunch with Max in Milpitis, 1 hour evaluation in Sunnyvale and 1 hour in the chair with my fave cheek spreaders at Orthodontist’ office). I left home at 9am and got home-ish (stopped at Safeway) at 5. Only 2 billable hours for that day, and sad sad news for my back molars.
You know how last time I was at the ortho I complained that my back teeth weren’t touching and after many many bite and grinds on the carbon paper the ortho feedback was: it’s just one spot, we can build the tooth up? THEN when I went to Dr. Steve my DDS he said Uh no, those teeth are nowhere near touching and we can’t build a tooth up that high? Remember? I do. I remember wondering why my ortho would lie to me…or deceive me…also wondered if she was blind. Well, I wore that newfangled bottom retainer every day and night for months to fill in my gaps, and I went in for my follow up hoping for either good news or an acknowledgement of oversight. There I was, sitting in the chair doling out ergo advice to the techs (have you ever seen an ergo friendly ortho exam room?) and here comes Dr. Quo. She’s so cute. But I reminded myself I was not going to be overpowered by her charms. I was going to get to the bottom of this life of chewing on only one side.
She looked in my mouth, checked out how my retainers fit, and AGAIN said I needed just one spot addressed to get contact on the back left side. She (like last time) noted there was a filling in that back bottom molar and that perhaps someday when I got that filling replaced they could build up the composite, but I had already asked Dr. Steve about that and he didn’t think my filling needed replacing for many years. I was not willing to wait many years. There was much ahhhing and oh yesing as I explained how horrible life was with the inability to make it even (do you make it even? I like to chew things equally on both sides…don’t judge me.). Dr Quo suggested a “turbo”. A turbo is when they build up many many layers of composite on a tooth to essentially build the tooth up. I had one before during the post-op my teeth are strangers phase. So the cheek spreaders were again applied had I known they were coming I would have taken pix (because everyone needs their vanity taken down 1800 notches) and a lump of composite was deposited onto the top of my bottom left molar. Then Dr. Quo drilled and drilled and I chomp chomp grinded on the contact paper and she drilled more until I felt pretty even contact back there…                   oh but not quite. DOH!
I asked to see a mirror and looked in my mouth and lo and behold there was still a very large gap between back top and back bottom molars (see pic from last entry). My head did not spin, but my mind reeled as I wondered how on EARTH can she be talking to me about these teeth meeting when they clearly are not and are never at this rate going to?!?! I asked, “So, that gap back there between the back two molars…” and she interjected. “Oh. No. Those will probably never meet. After moving your jaw, that’s just how your teeth want to be.” (Stupid willful teeth) So evidently she knew long ago that those teeth would never meet and so didn’t talk about them anymore. When she talked about teeth meeting, she was talking about the second to last molar on the top and the back molar on the bottom. That 3 decade love afair between top and bottom back molars has come to an end. And there you have it. A tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.
Blarg.