Wednesday, August 5, 2015

So It Begins

It being orthodontic care, chapter Alyssa.

We had her consulting visit yesterday.

Much to my (but more so Tom’s) surprise, they actually started the process yesterday. She’s going to need quite a bit of work, due to a slightly crossed, deep bite. The doctor said he’s actually impressed that she doesn’t have more pain and that is due to the fact that she takes very good care of her teeth. Yes!!

The cost, though, is a bit of a shock to Tom. Why? I don’t know, maybe because he’s always surprised when things cost a lot of money? Tangent: Last year we took the girls to the Fort Wayne Zoo. This was Tom’s first visit to the zoo during which we had to pay in several years and the cost hit him hard. I think he often thinks we’re still living in 1955, when things were affordable and consistent with single income families. End tangent.

So even though I allowed the orthodontist to put separators on six of Alyssa’s teeth yesterday (she was in some pain last night, poor kid) he wants a second/third/fourth opinion on the cost.

Sigh. I’m worn out by the mere thought. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate using the phone? Especially for things like making appointments, asking for rough estimates for cost, etc. Ugh.

If we go with our current orthodontist (we’re going with our current orthodontist) Alyssa is looking at thirty (30!) months of orthodontic work. I know!! THIRTY months. We’re starting when she’s twelve and a half, and she probably won’t be done until she’s at least fifteen. I apologized to her for giving her my crappy teeth. And I wore my retainer last night in solidarity with her pain.

She still has eight baby teeth that need to come out like now. They’re impeding the growth of her permanent teeth, which yeah, not so good. The doctor said that he usually gives a time estimate of twenty-two months but for each baby tooth still hanging in there, he has to add a month. Yikes.

She has another appointment tomorrow at which they’ll add the spacers on her back teeth and at that point, we’ll talk about when she needs to have those baby teeth pulled.

I think we both just want to get this party started because the sooner it’s started, the sooner we can start the countdown to when it will be finished. And someday, like when she’s 27, Alyssa can thank me for the fact that she won’t have to pay for her own orthodontic work, like someone else we know.

2 comments:

Julie said...

I don't know if it helps, but we did a lot of cost comparison just by chatting with other moms and dads whose kids have braces. It's a pretty set price. One of the moms at my gym works for an orthodontist and she says pretty much all of them charge the same amount. Of course, that's in Indy but that's neither here nor there. And also, Rick was quite shocked by the price as well.

It stinks that she has so many months in front of her but it'll fly by. We're on the downslope of it now and it seems like not that long ago that she got them on.

The biggest pain is going to the orthodontist every 4-6 weeks depending on what changes they are making.

Tommie said...

Thank you...for this comment and for the email chain this morning. You absolutely helped. And actually, that's kind of what we did, what with me texting one of A's friend's moms last night and kind of comparison shopping. It was definitely sticker shock for poor Tom.