Oral Surgery

Some of you may have noticed a mention on my facebook page about the 11yo's oral surgery this week. It's funny because when he was a little boy, he had the most amazing perfect teeth. I remember wondering how he got such good teeth from two people who had braces and REALLY needed them :)

Anyway, when the perfect baby teeth fell out, the adult teeth came in poorly. Or, in the case of the teeth relevant to this post, didn't come in at all. He's had braces for 9 months or so, which has really helped his teeth a lot. However, he has a small mouth and there isn't room for all the adult teeth en route. Also the upper adult canines decided that they didn't need to come down and were planning on just staying up in the gums forever. So his orthodontist recommended (that's the nice way to say "insisted") that we take him to the oral surgeon. The final decision was that he needed 6 teeth pulled. The 2 upper baby canines, two adult teeth (for which there was no room), and two other baby teeth that hadn't fallen out yet and were interfering with the braces.

The big mess was the adult canines. To get them to come down, they cut slits in the upper gums (on the outer side of the gums, not inside the mouth) so that they can get to the teeth. Then they attached a little knob to each tooth, and a chain to each knob. The orthodontist can now attach these chains to the braces and pull the teeth down into place. Apparently one of them will take up to 6 months get pulled down :(

He was very scared and very brave, even when they put in the IV. The doc let us keep the teeth. (click below if you want to see them. I purposely overexposed the teeth, 'cause they're really gross)


The patient is doing well, but his face is swollen up by his nose, which makes him look like a gefling. The swelling has gone down a bit, but you can still see the "gefling' in there!