My Travels Through the Scary World of Dentistry

Dental Part 1

The tooth fairy was clearly in a bad mood when visiting me.  This along with my parents’ decision to forgo braces has led to adult snaggle teeth.  A dentist would refer to this as significant overcrowding.  My teeth are not straight when viewed from any plane.  They jog up and down and back and forth with a bit of caving in to make it really interesting.  And when my permanent teeth arrived, the dentist decided to grind down the extra long canines to avoid that unpleasant vampire look. I am not making this up. Plus my teeth were very cavity prone.  Not sure it had anything to do the bandaid box of sweetarts I brought to school everyday but lots of cavities meant lots of dreaded dental visits often without novocain.  To make it worse our family doctor supplemented our diets with constant antibiotics.  That does amazing things to the color of your teeth.

Fast forward to 58 years old.  I figured by keeping my teeth tidy and gums healthy, the really scary dental work magnified by an active imagination could be avoided.  To this end I had my teeth cleaned 4 times a year, flossed, proxabrushed and replaced amalgam fillings with composite.  But the snaggle teeth would not be ignored and I started to experience pain.  My dentist said I needed braces.  Whoaaa, I am 58, is that even possible?  He said to see an orthodontist.  This was the beginning of a learning curve that culminated in a decision to fix my teeth with Invisalign and Accelerated Osteogenic Orthodontics (AOO) also known as Wilkodonics. Unfortunately there is an incredible lack of awareness about Wilkodonics, even among the dental community. So in an effort to change that, I will chronicle the process from beginning to end. Hopefully it helps someone else out there.