First world problems: dentistry.

To be honest, it's not the orthodontics that are bad, it's the anticipation I build up and the disappointment that brings me down. Every time I set a pretend end date, like "surely they'll be off by the weddings" slash end of the year slash my next birthday slash family reunion, and passed it with braces on my teeth for the foreseeable future, I got depressed. Grieved a bit, set up a new pretend end date to anticipate, got disappointed again, and so on and so on.

So imagine how I felt, to have a REAL end date from the orthodontist, and turn up to get a cast made for my lower retainer wire, and also get offered another 6 to 9 months of treatment. Yeah. What a fun decision. The 'frugal and sensible' me says "get value". But the 'creature of anticipation' me can't face it easily.

I went to clean my teeth after lunch and thought "this should be the last week of cleaning my braces after lunch at work" and broke the dam of teary self-pity. And open plan offices are not tremendous fun places to vent and cry. Thankful to H who took me to the Lindt cafe. I wonder if they get many sobbing grown women ordering iced-chocolates. It was a very awesome iced-chocolate. Then we planned our valentine poems.

Bible study last night was good, although I almost walked away from the door and went home to wallow some more, and I was a little grumpy and unencouraging. We did session 2 of The Course of Your Life. My takeaway point was to be thankful for God's sovereignty.

Today I feel tired and frustrated still, but I'm getting closer to having a sensible perspective on it. I googled "robotic orthodontics" and found out what it actually is.




So I'm narrowing it down in my head to a few questions to ask next week, like,

1) will the gap bounce open again like it did the first time?
2) if, after 2 months or something really short, it looks like it's not going to work like the promises, can we just pull it off, rather than keep hoping.

I might be able to make the best of it yet.