Orthodontists Are Sadists

Sometimes I really do believe that all orthodontists are sadists. Not only that, but I also feel I could be the victim of the cruel practical jokes of my orthodontist.  I can just imagine them as soon as I leave the room, Mr Morris and his dental nurse letting out raucous laughter as, yet again I take their latest ‘crazy idea’ seriously.

On Tuesday I was given little rubber bands to attach to my braces.  Rubber bands.  RUBBER BANDS. My mouth looks like a game of Cats Cradle. And you know what, to top that off, I have to put them on myself. None of this brace business which you put up with and eventually your orthodontist takes it off*. These I actually have to apply myself.  It’s like it’s not enough just to inflict the pain. No, no - they want you to inflict the pain yourself onto yourself! As if all they've really been waiting for is this final test to see if they've actually broken you enough to effectively wire your own mouth shut with stretchy elastic bands.

Mr Morris, my orthodontist, had two free hands, a big fuck off torch to see into my mouth with, a prodding tool and tweezers with which to apply the bands to my braces. Alone in my bathroom trying to get a better view in to my mouth with my phone torch in one hand and a band applicator in another, I knew I was going to be at that mirror for a while. This was going to be no easy task. No sir. I wrestled with the twangy elastic and eventually I managed to apply the elastic circles to the metal work already adorning my teeth, carefully avoiding my recently stitched gums. Of course, there were a number of occasions in which I accidentally let go of one end of the band and it pinged back into my mouth with great gusto like it would do to Jim Carey in some comedy about a man with a brace. It’s one of those moments where you know it’d probably be kind of funny if it wasn't happening to you.

Mr Morris assures me, they’re helping to support the plates that are holding my jaw together, but I’m not so sure. I think I am one of many poor, poor orthodontic patients who are taken in by these jokers. I can picture them now in their dental lair trying to think up the next ridiculous invention they can create to cause their willing patients pain, misery and humiliation. I only hope I'm out of braces before they think up the next one! 

Oh and by the way, thee bands have altered the way my voice sounds. Because of having my jaws clamped together by elastics, ironically I sound as thought I'm speaking through gritted teeth. Funny that.

*It is possible, you might be able to get them off with secateurs. I have considered this.

It's nearly four thirty and my tooth's hur...oh wait.

It is day 6 of my recovery from corrective jaw surgery. Thus far I have had my fair share of highs and lows. In some ways, I enjoy having time off work concentrating on recovery. This really limits the amount of things you can and can’t do. I now get made a lot of cups of tea; my meals are prepared for me; I’m not allowed to over-exert myself doing things like taking the dog for a walk or doing any housework/tidying up. To compliment this, here is a list of things that it has now become perfectly 

acceptable to do...

1.       Stay in my pyjamas, all day.

2.       Sleep more than 12 hours per day.

3.       Watch wall to wall TV

4.       Ask people to get your dinner for you.

5.       Ask people to pass you things that are not within reach or require getting up to get i.e tv remote, magazines, laptop charger, cup of tea, salt etc.

I have also come to enjoy keeping abreast of current affairs. I hear the news at least three times a day and I’m on twitter all the time. When you have all the hours of the day to google everyone’s names, politics seems a much easier subject to stay on top of. The nice thing about this is that it can make you feel connected to the world going on around you. When you’re at home with no one but the dog to talk to for most of the day, it does make you feel like the whole world is just carrying on without you. 

So, the above highlights the positives to being in a state of recovery. Now to the low points. One of the characteristic lows of the following two weeks to corrective jaw surgery is that you’re bound to come out the other side initially with a face swollen to the ‘size of a football’-as the ENT consultant nicely put it. I very luckily skipped the football phase, am passed resembling a Nick Park plasticine creation and have moved onto a Geoffrey Palmer state of affairs.

My face is also incredibly sensitive and tender and sleeping is quite difficult. I can’t eat anything that is remotely chewable so I’m eating soup, porridge and scrambled egg. This is generally fine but yesterday I chose to watch the food channels. I don’t know why, I knew it would be torture.  I predictably became quite bitter watching Nigella Lawson tottering around throwing dinner parties and Nigel Slater going through the his fridge, cooking leftover meals. I’ve have had to leave the cooking channels to their own devices for a couple of days. After a summer of eating deep fried and battered foods in abundance at Edinburgh Fringe, I see the next couple of weeks as a kind of controlled diet which it will be impossible to break without risk of screwing up my jaw forever! 

Blogging Experiment!

It is begrudgingly that I write; not with ease.  But since my optimistic 2012 New Year’s Resolution to write a blog every week has fallen short somewhat (my output to date being 2/40 posts) I felt like I really should put pen to paper, or finger tips to keyboard as it were. 

So I’m writing.  This is it, this is what I want to do.  This is what I tell everyone is where my real passion lies.  When people ask me in my boring-as-hell day job, if I’d be interested in a permanent position within the boring-as-hell company I say, “Well this is temporary.  You see, I’m really interested in writing-being a journalist!”  This is all fine until someone asks what I write.  Then things all get a bit sketchy.  I have all the intention, all the thoughts of what I could write.  I plan to do so much.  But when it actually comes to the physical writing itself…therein lies the rub.  Writer’s block of course! Yes, since my last flash of inspiration, back in January, which produced the sparkling entertaining and seriously underrated “Top 5 Whistling Songs” (that’s right fellow bloggers, read it and weep!) I have been living in the shadow of every writer’s worst and most feared enemy: Writer’s Block.  Symptoms include increase in appetite, baking (these first two go hand in hand), sudden intense interest in twitter, royal news, Gilmore Girls on E4 (until it moved over to channel 5’s '5 Star' which, fortunately or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it, I don’t know the Sky channel number for), current affairs, long winded sports (snooker, cricket, golf), watching Bargain Hunt, deciding to learn a new language and instigating and being at the centre of an unnecessary number of Spring Cleans.  You can, I’m sure, understand the torture these last 10 months have been for me, living with Writer’s Block. 

Carrying out all of the tasks that procrastination requires me to, I should theoretically have something to write about.  William Styron’s character Stingo, a young writer in New York in the novel ‘Sophie’s Choice’, bemoans his inability to write, “I had the syrup but it wouldn’t pour”.  I feel like I have the components to make the syrup potentially…it’s just the small question of making the syrup and then pouring it.  

I’ve been brutally honest readers.   I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here or if it’ll be up to scratch but I’m going to give it my best shot for the remaining weeks until New Year.  My technique is going to be to put a list of different subject topics into a hat and then draw them out each week to decide what to write about.  Any suggestions are more than welcome as is any feedback both positive and negative but most importantly constructive!