Our long national nightmare, etc.

Hello, as of 9:00 this morning my son and I both have full use of all our teeth. You know, collectively. I realize that sounds kind of wackadoo, but it's a milestone for us, trust me.

In my son's case, he finally FINALLY, after 2.5 years, has all the orthodontic braces brackets off his teeth. This was supposed to happen last summer, but then it didn't, because his teeth weren't ready. Then it was supposed to happen in December, but it didn't, because the orthodontist office closed down between Christmas and New Year's Day. Then it was supposed to happen in January, but it didn't, because his teeth STILL weren't completely ready. (Some of them were, and he got THOSE brackets removed, but some of the brackets had to stay on.) Today ALL of his teeth were ready, and so he finally has braces-free teeth, although he does have a permanent retainer on the bottom and three different removable retainers that he has to wear all the time in various parts of his mouth, but we aren't talking about those.

In my case, a crown popped off one of my lower left molars back in May (MAY! nine months ago! I coulda had a BABY by now!) to reveal a crumbled tooth underneath, which then needed to be extracted, and this began a months-long roller-coaster ride known as the Dental Implant Process. And it really is a process -- first the bone where the extracted tooth used to live has to grow back, then the implant (which is essentially a giant titanium screw) is drilled into said bone, then the bone needs to make happy with the implant in some esoteric way that I don't fully understand, then the implant needs to be uncovered and have a little doohickey put on top to stop the gum from growing over it, then FINALLY a crown is loaded onto the implant and hey presto, you've got a tooth again. That happened a couple of weeks ago, and you'd think I would have been celebrating then, but you'd be wrong because my dentist decided, on the day she loaded the crown onto my implant, that the crown in my upper jaw right above the implant crown needed to be replaced so she took it off and put a temporary crown there instead. I know, right? I couldn't even FLOSS around that thing for fear of popping it right off (I am now completely paranoid about popping off crowns, since that's how this whole nightmare started), much less chew gum or nuts or crunchy pretzel sticks or any of the other stuff that I had been looking forward to eating again, finally, after MONTHS without a tooth on the implant site. No, now I had to wait TWO MORE WEEKS to get the permanent crown on top.

That happened yesterday, and it was way more of an ordeal than I was anticipating but WHATEVER, I HAVE ALL MY TEETH NOW. And so does my boy.

I'm thinking crunchy tacos for dinner, with toffee and peanut brittle for dessert.