I broke my retainer and now I get to visit the dentist repeatedly

Just got back from the dentist, and like every trip to the tooth doctor, it was filled with a mix of bad news, long bouts of staring up at the ceiling, the music of Jack Johnson or John Mayer or some other dude with an acoustic guitar, and feeble attempts to make small talk while strangers rooted around inside of my face.

If it weren’t the expense of these visits, I actually wouldn’t mind them. I find something oddly relaxing about trips to the dentist. The work they do is fascinating, requiring both exacting precision and social competence. Plus, they wield a lot of cool tech. I’m always nerdy about that kind of stuff.

Plus, for whatever reason, I occasionally develop a morbid fascination for the many ways in which my aging body is falling apart. If you space out your trips to various medical professionals enough, you’ll always receive a surprise or two when you finally stroll through the door. I love surprises.

The reason for this visit qualified as an emergency, albeit one of the mildest caliber. While eating a piece of raw broccoli the night before, I’d dislodged my permanent retainer, a thin piece of metal wire that has been affixed to the backside of my lower teeth for nearly two decades. Without it, my rebellious teeth — shaped into a relatively straight line after months of training — would surely give my face the middle finger and retreat to their original, willy-nilly positions inside my mouth.

As things often are when I’m involved, the situation with my retainer was about as bad of as it could have been. My rare attempt to eat something healthy had punished me by separating the thing from the rightmost tooth to which it had been affixed, leaving one end of the wire to bounce wildly within my mouth. Had I only broken the cement holding it against one of the middle teeth, I could have gone about my evening feeling mildly annoyed, but still able to function without obsessing over the change, and if I’d more thoroughly damaged the retainer, I likely could have removed it from my mouth entirely.

Not that I didn’t try. To remove it, that is. Staring at my hideous visage in the bathroom mirror, I gripped the loose end, then twisted and pulled and twisted and pulled some more until I feared my efforts would unearth my tooth from my gums before the wire from my tooth. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a retainer even more misshapen than it was before.

The good news was, I wasn’t in pain. On a previous occasion in which I’d shattered some of the cement holding that sliver of metal in place, that time by eating a baby carrot, it left a portion of wire exposed in just the spot where my tongue naturally rests. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to control my tongue — a frequent problem — and I rubbed it against the newly exposed metal over and over and over until the tip of my tongue beaded with blood.

No, this time, the damage wasn’t pain-inducing, just annoying. Every time I talked, the loose end of the metal wire would bounce wildly like a bobble head in a Jeep, tapping against the top of my teeth, the back of my teeth, the roof of my mouth and the end of my tongue. Eating was also a challenge, with every bite leading to a fresh morsel of food impaled on the end of the retainer. This was also the first time in which brushing my teeth probably did more harm than good.

Eventually, I managed to bend the wire enough to wedge it within the curve of my teeth. It felt odd, but I was at least able to exist somewhat comfortably until the dentist could remove the thing entirely the next morning.

As I write this, it’s the first time in many years the backsides of my bottom teeth are free of their harness. When I run my tongue along the line, I feel nothing but enamel. It’s an odd sensation.

While I was in his office, the dentist was kind enough to locate a few cavities that will need filling and something with my gums he claimed was “interesting.” Always great to hear when you’re hanging out with a medical professional, regardless of their genre of expertise.

Of course, this just means future trips to the dentist for yours truly, and as we established from the offset, I kind of don’t mind those. Guess I’m just lucky.