My Family Orthodontic History
My father -- Age 46
My father first started wearing braces when he was 12 years old in 1966. There are no close-up pictures but in some it does look like he has a mouthful of metal. He says in sixth grade it was not really too important to him, a couple the other kids wore braces. He got them off in seventh grade. Total time was about a year and a half. He had to wear a retainer, which he did for about two months and never put it on again. My grandmother thought he was wearing it every night like he said he was, and that he did not need to go back the orthodontist. All was fine until my aunt and Uncle, fraternal twins, had to start their orthodontic work. My grandmother and was laid up at the time after an operation, so my father had to do the driving. It was sometime after Christmas of his junior year in high school. Mary and Todd had to get their spacers on, which the time had to go between each and every tooth, (boy that must have hurt). So my father thought he was really getting over driving them to their appointment on a Thursday morning, a school day, and then having the car to himself for the rest of the day, a fairly new treat. When the orthodontist heard he was at the office, he had my father come back. He had not seen my father in almost four years, during which my father had grown 8 inches. The combination of the growth spurt, and a lack of retention, had caused a relapse. One look and the orthodontist had him in a chair. Five minutes and a bunch of uh-ohs later, and the orthodontist was on the phone to my grandmother. Five minutes after that, he was explaining to my father that he thought he could get most of the bands on that day. According to Mary and Todd, there was just as blanks stare from my father. "What?". "To correct the relapse, the problem is almost worse now then it was before." "What?" "It is obvious you did not wear your retainer, the best treatment right now is to reband your teeth." "What?" The orthodontist than one on to explain that he removed the bands with saved them in his file cabinet with all the study models and x-rays. He said it looked like he could get the bands on since the probably had enough space between the teeth. He instructed the assistant to put the thickest spacers between my father's teeth, and spent the next half-hour putting the regular spacers between my aunt and Uncle's teeth. Then he came back and put the bands on my father teeth. The orthodontist was right, the managed to get the all on in one sitting.
My aunt and uncle thought this was hysterical. My father and spent the week before their appointment telling how funny they would look, calling them metal mouth, railroad tracks and all the stupid little names. Now he was my father almost causing traffic accidents try to stare at his metal mouth in the rear view mirror on the way home. My uncle's first line to him in the car was "you're right they look really funny especially on you." My aunt really got to him when she asked "don't you have a date with that girl tomorrow night"? And that was true, a girl he had been trying to date for a year a half finely said yes. He was pleading with my grandmother to let him go back to the orthodontist the next day to have the braces taken off, but she didn't even take that seriously. That date didn't go particularly well, the girl said "all he did was mumble all night". My grandmother just pointed out to him that it was his fault that he didn't wear his retainer. It was two years later before he saw his teeth again.
My Family Orthodontic History Part 2Sent in by Slyradley
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My Mother
age 46
1969 age 14 and as my grandmother says 'a strong willed girl'. Neither of her parents were really assertive either so my mothers little tantrums for two years kept her from starting her orthodontic treatment earlier. But in 1969 her rebellion, and her dentist, caught up with her. She was caught with some older guys and a couple of joints in the local woods behind his office. She had just turned 14 in January and was a freshman in the local public school. They didn't arrest her, but her parents were freaking. So they figured she was going down the path to distruction and planned to enroll her in a Catholic Girls School. It took some doing to get them to accept her after the semester had started, but my grandparents managed. What they didn't do was tell her. They did tell her she was going to the orthodontist the next morning, no matter what she wanted. Two weeks later she spent the day in his office getting her bands on. My mother was none too pleased about any of this. She gave the worst day of my life etc. speech and how she looked like an idiot with all that metal. My grandmother kept trying to tell her about her new school but my mother didnt even listen, until she stormed upstairs to her room and found her school uniform. My aunt says she never heard as much screaming ever, by anyone in our family. The next morning, all decked out in her plaid uniform, white shirt, black shoes and full bands (not even arch wires yet) she was walked to a bus stop at 6:00 in the morning and sent to her new school. She promptly cut her first day of classes. After an eventful evening, she decided to attend her new school (since she was now considered permanently grounded). She kept on complaining about the braces, about her new school and how about how everyone thought she was some depressoid freak because she barely talked, never smiled and spent half her time in the counselors office. The next week the archwires went on and then her piece de resistance, a cervical headgear. Despite everything, she would never wear it unless my grandmother was standing over her. This just led to more fights. Same with the elastics. This went on until almost the end of her senior year (time extended by her lack of cooperation). When they finally came off three weeks before graduation she was stoked and went smiling everywhere. Until a week later when she was a passenger in a car and turned around just long enought to she the car slam into a telephone pole and her mouth into the dashboard. She ortho visited her in the hospital and when she woke up the next day, she had her braces on again, for six more months. She was actually very lucky, even though she ended up wearing them for graduation and her first semester in college.
On another note, she and my father were patients at the same ortho at the same time and didnt really know each other. When they were finally introduced at a party during summer break in college they kind of recognized each other but could not remember where from. It was only when she asked if he could drive her to a 'dental' appointment the next day that they figured it out.
My family history part 3
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This is the best (worst) ortho story in the family. It has to so with my mother's cousin, who is actually very close to our family. Anyway it also goes back to the lae sixties and the dark old age of bands. She had three cousins, Ann, Josh and John. Ann is as old as my mother, Josh is a year younger (born with perfect teeth) and John is two years younger than Ann. Ann was all of 5'2" in high school and was, physically anyway, a late bloomer. John was six feet tall as a freshman in high school, and grew to 6'5". Anyway he got his braces on when he was 12 and in 6th grade. Ann 'wasn't ready' yet, she was in jr high. John wore full braces for a little over two years, including a cervical headgear 14 hours a day. Ann, who knew her day was coming, kept saying she would 'never wear one of those things." John was big, but always did what he was told and never complained or fought for the year he had to wear the headgear. He had his braces off before high school (was a stud athelete, had one tooth knocked out in a basketball game in his sophmore year). Ann was finally ready (never could figure out what ready meant) in november of her sophomore year when she was 15. Ann was small, but determined. She had no real figure yet and was often confused for someone much younger. That didnt help her attitude. And she kept on insisting no headgear. One of her friends told her that if she didnt have teeth pulled, they wouldnt need to use headgear. So Ann, thinking she would outthink everyone, refused to go to the oral surgeon to have het teeth out. Nothing her parents or the ortho said would change her mind, and she never said why, they thought it was just the pain thing. Turns out Ann's friend was way wrong, this added about two years to her treatment. So the ortho reworks everything he had planned and Ann reluctantly got her bands on. She hated that already but figured she was the same as John, two years and out. What she didnt know was that she would have been lucky to get them off in three years and the ortho had told her parents that it could take four years and since he had to do it the 'slow way' it could take longer. Since she never had her teeth extracted, the ortho 'had no choice' but to use a high pull headgear that he said would be worn 14 hours a day. Ann freaked when he tried to put it on her the first time. She refused to let him and he made an appointment for her and her mother for the next week. When her mother finally found out why Ann wouldnt get the teeth pulled (Ann was in tears when she confessed)the mother was mad, and every bit as determined a person as Ann. The next morning they were in the ortho's office and Ann got her headgear, and it was a weird one. The high pull strap had two hooks on each side for elastics, which would go to the facebow, The facebow had loops in the arms halfway from the mouth to the end of the arm. One elastic on each side went from the top hook to the loop in the arm, and another elastic went from the bottom hook to the end of the arm. She only had two choices in color of the strap red or green. Ann wouldnt pick, so her mother picked green because it 'went with her eyes.' So to recap, mouthful of bands, green headstrap with four elastics going to weird facebow, looking at four years minimum.
Ann went to a girls high school and spent an hour and a half one way to school on the bus. She was in a bunch of clubs so she always stayed after school. The agreement was she would never have to wear it to school, which only left 11 hours a day during the school week. Which also meant she had to wear it all weekend. The real fight came with basketball games, footmall games, dances etc. Ann figured these were scool, Ann's mother figured these were not. It got to the point where the mother would go to the games (John was in most of them) and Ann would try to stay home. Mom didnt like that so she insisted Ann go 'support her brother'. If she was caught not wearing it, she was grounded, until her mother found she was intentionally getting grounded. As her mother put it "two years of evil vibes from that damn antenna'. That lasted until graduation. Ann was still wearing it in college, at nighttime only since she was hundreds of miles away. Ann didnt get the braces off until the middle of her junior year in college. |
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