orthodontic fun

(For backstory on our dentistry and orthodontic fun, read here, here, and here.) 

The King and I finally had our consultation with the orthodontist last week.  We met with a case consultation manager (or whatever the hell her title was) for quite a while, who was very informative and mostly nice.  We started by telling her of Buttercup's co-parenting situation, and explained that we had lots of questions about what had gone down thus far.  Then she started at the beginning and walked us through each step. 

To save you the lengthy explanations of Buttercup's dental issues, here is a brief recap...

1- As Buttercup has a narrow upper part of her mouth, they originally wanted to put an expander in to make room for adult teeth to come down. 

2- Upon closer examination of her mouth they realized her bite is a few millimeters off of what "normal" bite should be, plus she has a slight overbite.  All of the baby teeth are not yet out of the way, but as they do finally come out, the orthodontist plans to put in the braces to correct these slight "problems."

3- And finally, once the x-rays were done, they saw one of her canine teeth is not coming down straight, but at a 45 degree angle.  If the baby teeth do not come out soon, and the expander and braces are not allowed to do their work, then an oral surgeon will need to cut into the child's gum and find this stray tooth, attach a brace to it to slowly pull it into line. 

Perhaps it was her manner of speaking, saying things like 'first, we WILL do XYZ, and then we WILL do ABC...' but overall, the consultant was rather convincing.  Then the Doctor came in.  While he was very nice, and less arrogant that I expected, he spun the whole thing a bit and helped me realize that these people are simply out to make a buck.  He went on trying to scare us about the possibility of Buttercup's face getting infected and falling off, IF we do not get this one canine tooth into place.  His scare tactic fell a bit short when he conceded that such terribleness is extremely rare and unlikely.

The other funky thing is the money part.  Originally the plan was to get an expander.  Then when they saw this out of place canine tooth, and noticed Buttercup's 2 millimeter off bite, they jumped right to full on braces.  But, in an effort to get us to take the bait (which Riddle clearly did!) they made a deal.  Not unlike those late night infomercials...  ***Buy the braces now, sign up for 30 months of service, for a low monthly bill of 150 dollars, and we'll throw in the expander for no extra cost!  What a deal!!!  You can't pass up this extraordinary plan to save you years and years of toothy hassles.****

Apparently, when Riddle had her consultation, she bought the deal.  Her desire to be the ultimate best parent to Buttercup had her signing up for the entire plan before thinking about it rationally, or consulting with the King.  And that is where the disconnect was.

The King and I came to the conclusion that we ought to be a bit more conservative when it comes to this kind of thing.  Partly about money, but even more so about Buttercup.  He and I both had some serious dental/orthodontic work done as children, and remember it with pain.  If we can get that canine tooth to move on it's own, if we can avoid oral surgery, if we can skip the pain of braces working against her playing the trombone, I think we'd rather. 

We agreed to get her the expander, get a few of those baby teeth pulled, and make some room in there for teeth to settle into their adult places.  If after a half a year or so, and another x-ray it's not going the right direction, we'll reasses.  But until then, we ain't buying the package.