— tapioca world tour

“I think they’ve gotten worse.”

My teeth, I meant. Doc was hanging over me, looking concerned. He stared into my mouth a few moments before pronouncing his verdict, which no 29 year-old who’s spent 2.8 years at the orthodontist wants to hear:

“Hmm, I was hoping to see a finished case here, but I guess I was wrong.”

A really skilled female assistant switched the chain (chain gang of connected elastics, horrible) on the upper teeth, put a thinner wire on bottom and removed the bottom chain, slapped two elastics from my upper canines down to my lower canines and said, “Happy holidays!” All this without digging any fingernails into my gums. A wonderful present indeed.

Doc took a look and declared: “Looks good. Maybe next time you’ll be finished.”

Well, we’re entering 2008 under oral construction, but we can’t stop now. I can’t put my left molars together, so that’s a problem. The e-files on Doc’s computer still have my band date as 9-22-05, not 4-28-05. I want to go on record as having endured those five months! Those five months saw four oral surgeries and some major progress! When I reminded Doc (for the eighth time) that his records were not showing the correct treatment time, he shrugged, “Honey, your treatment time has gone waaaay too long.” I think he’s trying to save face by not updating my file to show the actual time that’s elapsed. How shady!

I better get free whitening from all of this.

I think the worst feeling in the world must be having a 22-year-old’s fingernails digging into your upper gums, while attempting to stretch a string of elastic bands across your upper and lower teeth, unsuccessfully, and repeating the endeavor five more times until you almost bite her.

“Two more months,” Doc said again. “No really, I mean it this time — your bite has been corrected, we’re just finishing up here.”

Let’s hope.

This post is a week late, but c’est la teeth.

I felt pretty bad about my earlier tantrum, but apparently Doc felt bad too. “I was thinking about it,” he said, “and I just feel really bad. I know this has gone on a long time, much longer than projected, and you’ve been very patient.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve only had a few major outbursts.”

To make amends, he removed the horrible cement snowman from my bottom canine, removed an extra twisted wire from my top molar, removed a hook that had been cemented on back of the FIC for the past 9 months, and got rid of the latex bands. He also re-glued a brace onto my bottom tooth (rather, an assistant re-glued it, singing Elton John off-key in a Portuguese accent throughout the procedure, which was hilarious) and sent me packing with a heavy wire on top and a medium one on bottom. Everything was fine until about 18 hours later, when I was in P-A-I-N, but it was still that odd familiar oral discomfort that reminds you your teeth are inching ever so closer to perfection…which makes it a little more bearable.

Who knows…a few more months? Maybe I’ll have really straight white teeth to match the snow…

What a bad day.

In addition to the $2000 eBay auction we had to forfeit with two minutes left (Sony lied to me and didn’t actually clean the camera head I sent in, even though they charged me $75 and told me it was all set) — in addition to this, I had a horrible ortho appointment.

After four months of waiting for my bite to realign with ineffective elastics, today was the terrible day my doc decided to start “correcting the over-correcting”: he glued white filling material (cement, basically) all over my bottom canine, such that my left molars will no longer close and it looks like a giant snowman made of white cement has parachuted from the sky onto my tooth. Minus the corncob cap and the button nose.

To make it worse, the assistant then dug in these horrible wires around my left molars so I could “wear the elastics on them” (two more elastics, both top-to-bottom on the left side molars to raise up the bottom teeth, so that when he puts a bottom wire back on they all even out).

At that point, I pretty much flipped out.

“Get these OFF!” I barked at my doc, after my appeals to the assistant went ignored. “I DON’T NEED THEM!” I was so angry about the cement snowman. Here I am, about to venture into the Southeast Asian jungle, about to backpack through landmines and join the Burmese democracy revolution and lead professional multimedia training sessions in Thailand, with a giant cement snowman on my bottom tooth and thick elastics pulling my mouth closed. Plus I can’t chew on the entire left side. “If you don’t take them off I swear I will rip them off myself!”

Opting for a truce, Doc removed one of the wire things on the bottom, but left the one on the top in place, as well as, sadly, the snowman. I would show you a picture but you’d be too horrified, or I’d be too horrified, or both.

Then I had a shameful episode: I threw a tantrum…not like a 2-year-old tantrum, though. More like a 14-year-old tantrum, which as we all know is much worse.

“I’M REALLY MAD AT YOU!” I screamed, because I was really mad at him, and also I could feel myself starting to cry and I didn’t want to bless the office with more of my tears. Lord knows that baptism happened too many times in 2005. Anyway, at that point the entire office froze and stared at me in fear. Doc stammered, “You know I love you,” to which I hurled the mirror they’d given me onto the table (I mean I really slammed it down, on purpose, as if I was in my bedroom and my mom just told me I couldn’t go to the 8th grade social because I didn’t pass algebra). The assistant jumped. Then I stormed out. Before leaving, I glared at the doc, now bending over some other patient, and growled, “When can I come back?!” I wanted everything off, immediately.

“When do you get back from your trip?”
“The 27th.”
“Ok, come back the day you get back from your trip.”
“FINE!” I said. “I WILL!!!”

And then I went in the car and whined to DD on the phone in my best I’m-almost-crying-because-I’m-sick-of-wearing-horrible-braces-when-I’m-almost-30 voice. He was very sympathetic, which is the best way to be when you’re dealing with a maniac.

If I don’t return from Asia for whatever reason, somebody please go to my ortho’s office and get back the $5500 he owes me. For the four extractions, for the exposure gum surgery, for the novocaine that bled out during the exposure surgery, for the impacted canine that took nine months to come down, and for all the times people saw the braces and mistook me for a student instead of working professional, for the 18 extra months that have elapsed after the date they were supposed to come off, get that money back for these dang braces, and invest it in GHRE.

Nothing to report, except I am “making progress” and I have two months left, supposedly. They’re still over-correcting my cant (fixing the tilting top teeth, which are tilting because of the 9 months spent pulling down the impacted canine) and once that’s over-corrected, they’ll put back on some heavy wires and everything will even out — or so they tell me. Christmas, this will be over, I hope.

A bracket popped off — because of the dang elastic I wear on it all day — so I went in for a fix. The office is so crowded now; my orthodontist has become very popular. There are 8 or 9 assistants, or so it seems. Today, D. worked on me. He’s a good kid, and an excellent assistant. “I hope you’ve been getting big raises,” I told him.

“Ha, you do?” he laughed. “Well, I’ve been here since the beginning.”

“Yeah,” I said, “So have I. And I’ll probably be here another five years.”

I am Patient #55. The 55th patient to be treated since the business opened…and one of the last to finish. Still, I don’t mind: I get free a free toothbrush every appointment, all the employees know me, and there’s something reassuring about the routine appointments — my apartments and boyfriends and jobs have all changed in the past 27 months, but my trips to the orthodontist have stayed the same. Consistency is a virtue, right? Something will feel very strange when this is actually over, and not just my teeth.

Nothing new to report. The adventure continues. My guess: November.