Tackling the tooth delay

C. in the dental clinic's chair

We finally left a dentist's appointment for C. un-cancelled. So, yesterday, a year after her last visit, her neglected teeth were examined and cleaned.

Another one of our daughters, the dear-near-dentist (she's in the midst of final exams) had a look at C.'s teeth two weeks ago. She was horrified by what she saw and kindly shared it all with me. Most scary was the wiggliness of C.'s front lower teeth, caused by her receding gums and her almost incessant teeth grinding.

The receding gums are in turn caused by yours truly. For years now, I've been happily brushing with this toothbrush

which I first touted here back in February 2013.

But all good - and easy - things must come to an end. It seems that that design doesn't clean the gums of larger teeth like C.'s. So on my dear-near-dentist-daughter's advice, I have just switched to a Paro brush. Now I find it impossible to brush all of C.'s teeth thoroughly with it. She fights me - pun intended - tooth and nail.

Well, at the dental clinic, it was suggested I tackle that challenge by either:

• Taping together a pile of  tongue depressors and placing them in one side of her mouth. Or
• Taping together two rubber wedge-shaped door stops, piercing the end of one and threading thread through that hole to enable quick removal at the first hint of swallowing by C. I kid you not!

I think I'll just keep struggling to keep C.'s mouth open by hand.

Now, to prevent the tooth grinding, the dentist suggested we purchase a custom-fitted mouth guard that she can wear day and night.

And finally, dear-near-dentist-daughter also urged me to have C.'s teeth x-rayed - something which has never been done. She said they can't be accurately assessed without them.

I dutifully requested them yesterday. But I was told that C. would probably not cooperate without somebody's intervention. Sure enough, when they tried, that's what happened. Since I wasn't willing to expose myself to the radiation in order to hold the film in place, we skipped the x-rays.

So, once again, C. was declared cavity-free. But, once again, we can't be sure she really is.