6. Adoption
"Are you quite sure you don't want me to come with you?" Martin had asked over breakfast.
The drizzle was heavy enough that they wouldn't spend the day on the boat. It was light enough that Mom would shoo them off the porch to find somewhere else to talk about whatever men talked about while fishing. Martin should definitely rather go with them to ensure that some buttinski didn't turn a few sips of beer into a matter for CPS.
"There's really no point," I'd responded. "Yvonne will drop me off afterwards. And you'll see plenty enough of me wearing them."
It was Yvonne who responded to the jingling from above the door.
"How was the Thanksgiving dinner?" I asked.
"It was exhausting, but loads of fun. I can't thank you enough for putting us in touch with Reverend Woods. They got on like a house on fire. I haven't seen Jimmy enjoying himself like that in a very long time."
Her smile would have reminded me of the business at hand this morning even if I had been able to forget. Every time it seemed I might, someone would say how pleased they were that Jimmy had suggested a way forward. Or how they felt sure Peter would propose an alternative to surgery or at least ensure that I had the very best surgeon. Or that whatever I was about to have fitted this morning could only be an improvement. Mom had even reassured Martin that Yvonne's really didn't look too bad at all.
Neither of the boys had yet had any first-hand experience with braces, but they both had very firm views about the colours I should get. That hadn't been something I'd even considered. Hers were no longer the sky blue I'd seen last week. They were now dark red, although not in combination with the white and black that RJ had considered appropriate given that we were rooting for Gramps' team.
"Shorter hair suits you," I said to Jimmy as he ushered me into his consulting room. That was mostly because I had no idea how to formulate a compliment about his no longer sporting that magnificent beard.
"Yvonne will assist me and tell you all about the appliance while I get on with fitting it," he said as he pulled over his ears the elastic ties of a surgical mask that explained his shaving. "It won't take long."
Huge metal braces taunted me from replicas of my teeth on his work tray. They disappeared as she tilted the chair back, and angled the light towards my mouth while he fitted his loupe. "Open for me, please." He removed my splint which Yvonne immediately rinsed and plopped into a fizzing cleaning bath. I opened again as widely as I could to accommodate the enormous shiny mass in his hand. "Only as wide as you would to put in your splint, please. I don't want to hurt your joints." I barely felt it until he pressed lightly on the upper and lower parts to click them into place. He took a good look around with his mirror, removed it, disconnected the top and bottom sections and then set about repeatedly inserting, removing, adjusting, having me bite and grind, and then eventually polishing until he was satisfied.
Yvonne must have seen the trepidation in my eyes. "Most people won't pay any attention, especially if you smile at them." Hers had been one of the first things I'd noticed about her, but she wasn't wrong. On a scale of one to five, my initial reaction had been a solid three, and it had definitely trended positive when she smiled. "Yours is very similar to the version I'm wearing. I'm sure you'll find it much nicer than your splint."
I finally asked the question everyone including me had been asking since I'd stood up out of this chair more than a week ago. "Why does it need to have brackets? I didn't think they were used on removable braces."
"They were Yvonne's solution to a confluence of problems. Open please ..."
His attention returned to my mouth. I turned mine to hers.
"One of his friends in England has been treating TMJ and apnoea successfully with a very clever appliance that fits onto both arches without getting in the way of the tongue. Jimmy was so impressed that he immediately set about trying to address the one shortcoming that bothered him."
She stopped to remove and rinse her own appliance, and dab it dry with a paper towel. She helped me don disposable gloves before handing it to me.
"I'm sure Jimmy told you that the purpose of proper tongue posture is to support and even expand the arch." I nodded with my eyes. "The problem is that his friend's appliance is rigid. His idea was to try to allow the tongue to do the work that the jack-screws do in most conventional palate expanders. That's a bit of a chicken-egg problem in the beginning for people with narrow arches, so he's looking at ways to expand the arch without anything bigger than this little horseshoe spring to get in the way of the tongue. Brackets are the best solution he's come up with so far. They'll let Peter use archwires to apply outwards force in the same way that they would with regular braces, except that they pull on sections of the framework rather than individual teeth."
"Bite for me please ..."
The appliance in my hand resembled a retainer except that the plate part was split in half, and made of thin moulded metal instead of plastic. Each half extended to parts that wrapped around and partially over the molars. These were connected by a metal bar over the front teeth to which the brackets had been welded. Unless one looked closely, it looked just like the brackets and wires on regular fixed braces.
That's only half the story," Jimmy said as he began working on the lower half of his appliance. Once again, I craned my eyes towards Yvonne.
She reinserted hers, taking the opportunity to show me how I should insert and remove mine. "It turns out there's an unexpected benefit to a removable appliance that looks like a fixed one. Braces are no longer unusual on adults." She gestured to hers. "I found that it was much easier to wear mine than to explain why I sometimes wasn't. Other test subjects reported the same thing. It seems that social pressure can actually encourage compliance. We're thinking about incorporating the idea as an option into more of our removables."
"Just a few more seconds. I've almost finished."
Jimmy reconnected the top and bottom parts of his appliance and returned it to my mouth.
"How does that feel?"
My joints were a little achy after all of the biting, grinding and opening wide, but the appliance itself was remarkably comfortable. I could barely feel the moulded palatal sections apart from the little nubs that he'd said would help train my tongue. The roughness of the brackets was something I'd forgotten about, but even that wasn't too bad. It was hard to judge how the pistons felt. I could feel them against my cheeks and I imagined I could hear them too, but they weren't at all troublesome. It was hardly discreet, despite the pale pink elastic chain Yvonne had recommended, but everyone had been right. On balance, it was better than the plastic splint. I'd be just one more of the many adults I'd noticed the past week who wore braces on their teeth, even if mine did look quite a bit chunkier than most.
"Thank you," I said.
"No, thank you," Jimmy responded as he switched off his light.