It is Saturday evening and I've been holed up in my room at my desk all... day... long. Can you take a guess as to why? You've got it! School is the dirty culprit voiding me of a Saturday night. Well, I still have a Saturday, just not a fun one.
Because of school and work, among other things, I haven't really gone out much or seen anything particulary interesting to write about. SO, I'm going to tell you a story about the time I cried in a dentist chair. Trust me, it's riveting...
I should begin the story by giving you a little bit of my dental/orthodontic history (oh my god, I'm writing about my braces on my blog on a Saturday night). So as I was saying, my first piece of an orthodontic appliance came to me at the age of 8. It was a retainer. I have no idea what it was for, but I do know that I wore it for a few months. A few years later, I got braces. At first, I only had braces on my top teeth and I know you're thinking to yourself, "top teeth, that's not all that bad." Well... with those top braces I was given the gift of headgear. YES, you heard me correctly, headgear. Slobbery, metal headgear. I don't have very many memories of my time with said headgear because I blocked out the year I had the damn thing, and you would too! So I've got the top braces and the headgear and then along comes the bottom braces and the bite plate. The only good thing about the addition of these two appliances was that I got to get rid of the headgear (Don't worry, I actually kept it and it's sitting in a keepsake box to show my future husband the real me). Now, I've got the top and bottom braces with a bite plate to keep my top teeth from knocking off my bottom braces. I had this combination of orthodontics for about a year, and somewhere within that year I got elastics to make me look like I had spiderwebs growing in my mouth (Please note: my first kiss with a boy came a while after I got the metal taken out of my mouth). Finally comes the day I get everything taken out of my mouth and off of my teeth. In return, I get a retainer... No biggy, I had that shit in my mouth at 8.
So for 6 years I was walking around with the straightest, most beautiful teeth ever... and then came the incident. Now, before this incident, I wasn't much of a floss-er. I would lie when the hygienist asked if I flossed everyday just like everybody else does. I was 19 and had to get my wisdom teeth out, but because of the many years (and $$$) of orthodontics, the dentist said he could do it, which I was happy about because I didn't really want to go under. So the day comes, and I'm sitting in the chair and they tell me they need to take some x-rays to update my file. Fine. X-rays are taken and after about 10 minutes my dentist comes in, puts up the printed x-rays on that light, clip-board thing and he says the following: You have 7 cavities. Cue me crying.
The best part comes later when my Mom has been brought into the room and her and the hygienist are consoling me. My dentist explains that he in fact can NOT take my wisdom teeth out there and I'll have to get surgery and go under (whatever). He says that he can start filling in some of those cavities right away (great). But after a few more minutes of me crying heavily, he says "we can't work on her if she's emotional."
He leaves the room, snot is now coming from my nose because of crying so hard, and I've never been more embarrassed in my life. Actually, there was that time my tear-away pants got ripped off of me in my co-ed grade 7 gym class, exposing my blue Fruit of the Loom panties... but that story is for another time.
-ACC
PS. For the next few months, I got all my cavities filled and my wisdom teeth pulled and I now floss religiously every single night before I brush my teeth for 2.5 minutes - I time it.
