My teeth in sesquipedalian detail

Hey, look. It's my teeth. Spooooky, mang.

That's the third panoramic x-ray I had done during a visit to one of Halifax's top orthodontists for a consultation on getting a billion-dollar smile. The panoramic x-ray machine had a hard time navigating around my broad, manly, hulking shoulders. That, and I was biting the bite-thingy wrong the first time and moved a little.


So, here's the lowdown.

Apparently I have a borderline skeletal Class III malocclusion. Moderate overbite, 2mm overjet, deep Curve of Spee, maxillary anterior diastema, excessive upper and lower interdental spacing, incisal misguidance, mandibular retropositioning, mandibular thrusting, anterior bruxing, abraded 1-2, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, 3-1, 4-1, 4-2, mandibular left closing shift, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, mandibular macrognathia, dental asymmetry, missing 1-8, 2-8, 3-8, 4-8, malformed (small) 1-2, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, 3-1, 4-1, 4-2.

Yup. That's a mouthful. (Har, har.)

The doctor spent about 40 minutes telling me how a proper bite was important, not just for the sake of a beautiful smile, but for my overall health. He demonstrated on charts, pictures, gizmos and a human skull how my funky bite could mess up so many things.

But when I told him what I do for a living, and how I'm concerned that not being able to speak properly would be a big hindrance to my life, he changed course.

He switched from a track that would lead to train-tracks in my mouth, to one that would slap porcelain on my chompers.

He recommends:
- continued bite plane therapy -- the plastic mouth guard that stops me from smashing my molars to pieces every night
- periodontal referral -- I guess to see if the gums in the gaps between my teeth are in jeopardy due to their exposure
- cosmetic dentistry to eliminate excessive maxillary and mandibular interdental spacing -- that is, veneers or bonding or grinding or something to un-gap my gappy teeth

That's assessment number one. I plan to have at least one more before pondering futher.

Here's something interesting. In searching for some of the terms in the very wordy diagnosis, Google spat back some intriguing results. Namely, this very blog. I posted first and then went to add some links -- and Google sometimes found that my entry was one of the only instances of that phrase on the net.

Another page with some of the same terms is another blog. Coincidentally, a blog by a woman who saw an orthodontist in Nova Scotia. Does it seem weird that terms appeared in both her diagnosis and mine, but not so commonly across the internet?