I had my appointment at Dr Joe's office on Wednesday morning and I was pumped. They took x-rays and molds and got did the final exam ready to start adding the brackets to my teeth and get the show on the road.
Something caught the eye of Dr Joe in my x-rays, and it wasn't a good something... he looked at the ceph and it was right then that he told his assistant to hold fire for a minute. He told me that there was something 'unusual' and that he needed to do a little investigation.
Gulp - something leaped in the pit of my stomach. Just a few minutes earlier I was taking my flipper out for the 'last' time and was all hyped up to get the braces on... now something was up, something was wrong and I had no idea what it was.
At that very moment in time I wished two people were there with me, Cory & Dr Brian. Now, yes, I know it might seem like a strange selection. Of course I wanted Cory there with me, that was my instinctual choice - we'd been through all the hurdles over the past year together.
But I wanted Brian there too because he knew case like the back of his hand. He's spent more time looking and working on my teeth over the past 12 months than anyone else in my whole lifetime. He had fought for the best treatment plan possible for me, I knew he'd be in my corner in this instance too.
I guessed that Dr Joe wouldn't jump to any conclusions without first consulting Brian anyway - and for that I was thankful.
After about 45 minutes of waiting patiently but with my nerves driving me crazy Dr Joe gave me the news, well actually he didn't even have to give me the news, he just had to show me the x-ray. I had looked at enough dental x-rays over the past year and was well able to see what he was referring to.
He told me that "the three musketeers" as I now refer to them (Dr Brian, Dr Johnson & him), had been on a long conference call and they had all been looking at CT scans, x-rays and pictures of my bone structure and recent procedures.
It turns out that in the 'accident' there had been some damage to my lower jaw too that we hadn't noticed yet. Now, that might sound strange, that there could be so much damage and it had gone unnoticed, but it's important to realise I have a really high pain threshold and there was no physical bumps or anything to point to any being damage there.... except when you look at the ceph x-ray and see there's a huge cyst lurking down there and a fair amount of bone loss.
So, the parking break had been put on - I wouldn't be getting my braces after all... Another hurdle, another struggle, another operation and more waiting...
I was so ready to be on a time out from all that, I was ready to be on the straight road to the finish line... I was ready for braces...
But it wasn't my time yet.
Instead I put my flipper back in, wiped my tears and pulled myself together.
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