Wisdom

Approximately three minutes after explaining to the dentist that my daughter’s syndrome means that she has difficulty controlling her emotions, she put on a pitch-perfect demonstration, and it was a corker. We had a full-on meltdown, with angry sobs and streaming tears. And it wouldn’t stop.

Her usual dentist had referred her to a chap at a different practice who is apparently the bod to go to for wisdom teeth extraction. We’d booked the day off school, and it was expected that her two bottom extra gnashers were going to be wrangled out in the surgery after a numbing injection.

But upon examination, the nice man explained very patiently that actually, now he’d seen the position of my girl's teeth for himself, he felt it best she be booked into hospital and have all four of the buggers out at the same time, under anaesthetic.

Oh dear. He tried to get across that this was necessary and would be the most comfortable for her (even taking into account her high pain threshold), but that really didn’t matter. Because the ‘best plan of action’ was not the expected plan of action.

I should have given my daughter a Plan B scenario beforehand. I normally do. It was a rookie error. I should have primed her with a: ‘of course, that’s what is supposed to happen today, unless...and if not...then this will be what we’ll do.”

But I hadn't. So the change threw her into a tizz. “What was the point of coming if they don’t take them out?” she half-sobbed, half-shouted. “Why did the other dentist say I’d have my teeth out TODAY?” She was fully distraught, fully blinkered, and totally unable to listen to any rational reasoning from anyone in the room, including, especially me. 

I did the only thing I could. Hugged her, waved the worried dental nurses away with a wink, mouthing: ‘She’ll be fine”, and walked my crying daughter out to the car and home.

She was fine. Later. After two hours. The waves of emotion had white-watered and crashed, and rolled back out to sea, and she was ready to take in the logic of the new plan.  Her inconsolable devastation at a ‘Big Change’ seemed like it had happened to a different person.

And, as always, always happens, a difficult day was very soon followed by a good ’un. 

She returned home from school this afternoon to say she’d enjoyed working on the school farm (yes, her school does actually have a farm attached to it - you calling us Country Bumpkins, loverr?).

“We were doing sheep stuff, Mum - you know, sorting them.”

“Sorting them how?”

“Putting the girls away from the boys.”

“Oh, I see. And...er...how did you tell the difference?”

“Well, the boy sheeps have testicles.”

“Oh, right.”

“And a penis.”

“OK.”

“But the girls don’t.”

“Wow, well, I didn’t realise you knew how to tell the difference so well.”

“Oh it’s easy. It’s just exactly the same as sorting humans you know - you look between the back legs for dangly bits.”

Song is Julie Byrne - Wisdom Teeth Song

Clench

Today we decided to spoil the kids and take them to the dentist. It was much like any other Christmas family outing: it was expensive, the children got bored waiting for the main event, and my boy ended up being taken to the car to ‘think about his behaviour’.

My daughter’s typical Prader-Willi tendency to obsess over something and talk about it repetitively has been in overdrive lately. She’s been uttering her daily mantras of “Are my teeth going down?” and “I don’t grind my teeth, do I?” over and over like a buddhist rapper on speed. (For the record, she used to grind her milk teeth when she was little but stopped when she was about six, and has a lovely, non-worn down set of gnashers).

So in a sneaky pre-planned move, I made sure I was seen first today, in order to give my dentist the low-down on what she should and shouldn’t say to my girl.

With my new co-conspirator fully signed up, and my examination over, we called in my daughter for her appointment. And like a seasoned luvvie, my dentist hit her mark and looked her patient straight in the eye. “Well, you’ve been cleaning your teeth really well, they are absolutely fine, there is no evidence of any grinding, and they are not worn down at all!” she told her. “In fact, it wouldn’t matter if you DID grind them, which you DON’T, but if you DID, I would just make you wear a mouthguard at night, which is exactly the same as the retainers you wear anyway,” she added, in an excellent fleshing-out of her role.

I smiled, hoping this expert advice would be useful to me in my attempts to stop my girl’s dental-based perserveration. And we left, after wrestling our boy out of the waiting room, where he’d climbed over the chairs, pinched his sister, and been responsible for mid-to-severe levels of noise nuisance whilst we tried to pay.

Obviously, I didn’t tell my girl that I’d spoken to the dentist behind her back. And there was something else I kept to myself. Which was that the dentist had noted evidence that I was clenching my jaw and possibly...and it pains me to say this...grinding my teeth.

This will never be mentioned in front of her. NEVER, do you understand? Jesus, I’d never hear the last of it. Imagine if after all these years my daughter finally stopped saying: “Do I grind my teeth?” only to change it to: “Do you grind yours?”

Video is The Cure - Grinding Halt

Release

When the dentist informed our daughter her teeth would need straightening, we braced for impact.

She hated the idea. We had long, long talks before her braces were fitted, where I explained why it was necessary and how she’d get used to it. It didn't seem to soften her resistance. And of course, we suspected from the start that the obsessional nature of our daughter’s Prader-Willi Syndrome would make the process more difficult.

We were right. Three days after her top brace was fitted, she completely dismantled the metalwork during the night, and I ended up taking her to A & E* (*see previous entry Scrap).

But after this Gonzo Audition For Scrapwork Challenge kind of start, things calmed down. She accepted the fitting of a bottom brace, the installation of slightly different style braces at later appointments, and even the joys of elastic bands at night during the final couple of months of treatment.

And this week, after only nine months instead of the expected year, her teeth were freed. They were let off for good behaviour. The scaffolding came off, and the previously higgledy piggledy gnashers were revealed: neat, tidy, and straight, having paid their debt to society for their previous waywardness.

“I liked my braces, Mum,” my girl said to me. The one who’d initially said: “No thank you, I’m not interested,” when the dentist first mentioned the plan. The girl who’d ripped out the Mark 1 model. The one who hated her food getting stuck in between the metalwork.

“It’s a shame they had to come out.”

Song is Diana Ross - I'm Coming Out

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Elastic

It was an almighty harumph, from a champion harumpher. My husband stomped past me, muttering. I was only able to pick out a few words in between the mumbled oaths. In a brief moment of articulation, he built up from a Muttley style “Shnikinrickin fashinrockn rassafrassa rickinrackets” to a climactic Jim Royle-esque “Easy? My arse!”.

The source of his impatience was a bag of tiny elastic bands and a plastic tool. Earlier, he’d taken my daughter to the orthodontist, who'd shown him, effortlessly, how the bands needed to be attached to hooks on her top and bottom braces to pull her gnashers together while she slept. His stomp was due to the lack of success on his inaugural attempt.

“I can’t remember you being this rubbish at Operation...” I commented, as I walked past him, with the irritating air of one who is convinced they will be able to swan in, adeptly perform the task the other failed at, and then be all smug about it. I'd picked this dig at his board game skills over the obvious, but ruder: "Should have thought you'd be used to manipulating a tiny, pink, tool..."

Once upstairs, I picked up the hook implement, and approached my daughter, who was lying in her bed. 

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, Mum’ll sort you out,” I reassured my slightly anxious-looking girl. With a few deft moves, one side was hooked, lined and sinkered.

We smiled at eachother. “I don’t think Daddy was very good at this, was he?” I whispered.“Let’s get this other side done, and we can tell him he was rubb...”  I didn’t reach the ‘ish’. The second band was proving a bit trickier, and suddenly it slipped, and catapulted up from the bottom of her mouth to her top gum, with an almighty TWAAAAAANGGGGG!. 

“Are you all right?” I asked, thinking that the elastic missile must have hurt. My girl couldn’t answer. She was shaking. Concerned, I grabbed her face in my hands and looked at her, and it was then that I realised she was giggling, uncontrollably.

Sometimes a mishap or a setback can reverberate, and set my daughter's nerves jangling. Less often, unpredictably, amazingly, she might even find it funny; this was one of those occasions. She set me off, too.  We were reduced to a heap of jelly, both giggling and making intermittent "Dddd-DOING!" noises, our laughs pinging backward and forward like the wayward band.

Video is Sultans Of Ping FC - Where's Me Jumper?

Indentured

I’ve got a virtual suit of armour. It was forged during the long, wild, terrifying day when surgeons bolted titanium rods into my daughter’s spine. It resides in a box in my brain, where I can rummage around and find it when I am in need of a bit of protection. There are a few other crazy items in the cranium cupboard, including a sink plunger and rubber chicken, but I have no idea where they came from or what I might need them for. But the armour is fished out regularly, and I’m only just packing it away now after its second airing in the space of a week, during which time I became an indentured* knight.  (*Teeth. I’m going to talk about teeth, you see).

My daughter needs to have braces fitted, and this week she’s had two visits to the dentist in preparation, to have two lots of two teeth removed. And I had to sit there about three feet away whilst they stuck an enormous needle in her gums and pulled out a couple of teeth, plonking them in a little tray right next to me, the roots covered in blood. Then watch it all over again seven days later.

It wasn’t actually squeamishness on either mine or my daughter’s part that had me preparing to don my battle armour, though. Her syndrome comes with a high pain threshold, which sometimes is a Good Thing. Needles and blood don’t especially bother either of us. But I was expecting tears, tantrums, and a general mêlée (wasn’t that the name of the car in the Dukes of Hazzard?) - simply because of a number.

Over the last few months, as my girl has struggled to cope with her anxieties and emotions, she’s been turbo perturbed by the idea of having teeth out. Subtraction has been at the root of her root subtraction. She’s been worried by the idea of having less than 28 teeth. She loved having 28 teeth. That specific number. She likes to ask everyone else how many teeth they have, and a common sight if you watch her talking to someone is how quickly into the conversation she will persuade them to stick their fingers into their mouth and dutifully count up their pearly whites. 

And yet, a meltdown didn’t happen. I think a slight Eureka! moment a few weeks back when we saw an X-ray of her mouth where her wisdom teeth were visible may have helped. “Look!” I told her, grasping at the opportunity that had suddenly presented itself to me. “See those four ‘secret’ teeth there, that you don’t normally see, well, if you count them that means you WILL still have 28!”

Cometh, the hour, cometh the man, or girl in this case. We went in, the uprooting was done, and we went back in the next week and repeated the removal process. Not one word of protest, not one flinch, not one conversation expressing dissatisfaction or worry about the whole thing. 

I shouted out a checklist to her this morning before school.

“Got your bag?”

“Yes.”

“Got your coat?”

“Yes.”

“Got your teeth?” 

“Yes.”

Well, she had to take them in and show them off, didn’t she?

Talking Heads - Pull Up The Roots

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Dentist

My daughter saw the school dentist the other day. Yes, I was surprised they had one, too. Apparently, he’s an NHS dentist who visits the special schools in his mobile dentist’s surgery. Which is in a van. (Now I’ve explained that, he actually sounds a bit like a serial killer, and I’m starting to worry...but I digress).

At this point I would like to remind you that my daughter is obsessed with her teeth.  To elucidate: she has asked me at least half a dozen times every day for the past year how many teeth she has; I then ask if any have fallen out since the last time she asked me; she replies “No”; and I tell her “That means you’ve still got 28.” Then it’s rinse and repeat.

Today, she arrived home happy after school, but then when I asked her how her day had been, she got that look. A potential meltdown was brewing, and I hadn’t spotted it beneath the surface. 

Her eyes brimmed with tears as she recalled her conversation with Dr H. Lecter, or whatever his name was.

“The dentist said I might have to have a brace, Mum. But he might have to take four teeth out.” She looked horrified at the thought of her beloved figure of 28 being ruined. 

And then, thankfully, her face changed again, like a warm wind had suddenly thawed her chilly thoughts. She looked at me, nonchalantly, and raised an eyebrow.

“I told him I wasn’t interested.”

Video is Steve Martin - You'll Be A Dentist (from Little Shop Of Horrors)


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Grind

Grind

Some things about Prader-Willi can grind you down. Sometimes it can be one little thing. Something you thought was sorted but turns out not to be.

Popping its nasty little head up over the horizon like a mangy meerkat this week was something grinding. In both senses of the word. 

We went to a new dentist, and she chatted away to my daughter, keeping her engaged, and telling her how well she’d been cleaning her teeth. All good.

But of course, I hadn’t warned our friendly tooth mechanic not to mention the g-word. ‘“There might be evidence of a little grinding, and we just need to keep an eye on it,” she said.

A klaxon sounded in my head. You see, my daughter is quite obsessed with this subject. She used to grind her baby teeth noisily and constantly, until the top set were worn right down (see picture).

Now she's older, she's got a nice set of pearly whites. When the adult teeth came through, she managed, as suddenly as she started, to stop mashing those jaws together. Gone was the clacking and grinding. I’d like to say it was more peaceful, but my girl managed to replace the actual grinding with talking, endessly, about how happy she was that she’d stopped doing it. Which was almost as annoying.

So then it came.  A wave.  In the corner of the examining room, where my daughter sat, as she waited for me to complete the ritual humiliation of being told to floss more.  Her shoulders shook and she sobbed, much to the concern of the dentist and her nurse. I got up and hugged my stricken girl until it passed.

“I don’t grind my teeth anymore,” she muttered, still sniffing. I whispered a brief explanation to the dentist, who told her that she wasn’t in trouble, her teeth weren’t going to fall out, and she was still the Number One Cleaner of Teeth In Chief.

So the crisis was averted. At least I thought it was. And then my non-clacking, non-grinding, toothsome daughter spent the next three days asking me if I was happy she doesn’t grind her teeth like she used to. Over and over again.

What’s that noise? What is it? Oh yes, that would be me. Gnashing my teeth together.

Video Is Grinderman - When My Love Comes Down