A Dental Story (Part 1)

About ten years ago, in graduate school, I went to a dentist to get my teeth cleaned. After the cleaning, the dentist came in to do the oral exam. After a few minutes of poking around with her implements, she said, "OK, now bite down."
I complied. "No, bite down all the way."
"This is all the way down for me."
"No, your molars should touch."
"My molars can't touch."
My dentist's jaw dropped and she stepped backwards from the chair, as if I had said I was carrying the plague. See, apparently this is very abnormal, and very, very wrong. Immediately I was referred to an orthodontist. He was very professional and friendly. Unfortunately, someone had given him some very bad information about what  a graduate student was going to be willing and/or able to pay for orthodontics. I don't remember exact figures, but his quote at the time may as well have been "Eleventy Bajillion Dollars." Still, we had a brief conversation about finances. He thought my joke about "interest free payment plans" was very funny. Finally, we came up with a solution I could afford: I decided to postpone treatment.
After a few months, and because it was financially convenient, I decided that I had just bumped into a well-meaning but over-zealous dentist, and that I didn't really need to fix my bite. After all, I was healthy -- I didn't have any problems eating, or any pain in my teeth. I mean, who knew better for my teeth? Me, a 24-year old with no formal training in dentistry? Or my dentist, who had been fixing teeth longer than I had been alive? Right!
Grad school came to an end, and Renee and I started bouncing around again. Each new city brought lots of new adventures. And new dentists! Annoyingly, they all seemed united in their desire to bring my molars together. It is as if the dentists all viewed my molars as star-crossed lovers, cursed to spend eternity apart, unless and until the dentist stepped in and (for a reasonable fee) used their god-like powers for good, and reunited them.
Uniformly, the dentists agreed something should be done. The only thing that kept me from believing them (besides the hefty price tag, which let me assure you, definitely helped) was that each dentist had their own terrifying creative solution for fixing my teeth. (For the record, I am not making any of these up.)
Dentist #2: We need to shorten your lower jaw. The operation is simple -- the surgeon removes your lower jaw, cuts a piece out of the center, and then re-attaches it. Afterwards, we will have to wire your jaw shut while it heals. Not too long: six to twelve weeks at most.
Moving on...
Dentist #3: We can definitely avoid surgery. We will simply file your back eight teeth down to pegs, and attach enlarged crowns to form a new biting surface. Of course, the life span of a typical crown is five to fifteen years, so you may expect to be replacing a crown once every 1-2 years after a while. But apart from that minor inconvenience...
Ah. Well, we'll put that in the "Maybe" pile.
Dentist #4: We will pursue aggressive treatment, first with a surgical operation in which we peel back your gum line, and razor thin cuts are made in the jaw bone between all of your teeth. This will let the teeth "walk" more freely and allow for more lateral movement via orthodontics. Because of the new positioning, some splaying will occur (that is, the top teeth will point out at an angle, not straight down). Nevertheless, your bite will be restored.
Wait... I only get to do this once? Pass.


Coming next: My upcoming surgery!