monkeymom's Diaryland Diary
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I have a headache.
I could weep. There is a situation going on here that I haven't mentioned before (not in this journal, anyway, but some people know about it already) but I haven't written about it because I wasn't sure what we were going to do, and I wanted to wait until we knew and then I could talk about it. Okay, but now we sort of know what we're going to do and I'm feeling a bit stressed by it all. Partly because I haven't had enough sleep, and partly because, well, I'll just tell you about it and you'll see.
Kim has been being evaluated annually by the orthodontist for years, and by years, I mean that since she was six years old, she has been going in and having panoscopic xrays (or whatever they're called) taken and she's got pages of notes, because her teeth are not aligned correctly and her chin juts forward more than it should. It isn't hideous, it just goes forward when she smiles, and the rest of the time, when her jaw is just sitting there, and her teeth are not meeting, she looks fine.
So a couple of years ago, the orthodontist said that she should probably have jaw surgery to correct the lower jaw problems and then Kimberly freaked out, because she had been watching some terrible show on TV with her father about Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong and nothing I could say would convince her that she would be just fine. We worried about it for a couple of days, and then I told her we didn't need to have the surgery, and if she decided to have it when she was older, she could do it then. And everyone calmed down and forgot about it.
So a couple of months ago Kim decided that she wanted to have the surgery, and I said okay, but didn't do anything about it, until she mentioned it again, and then when she was having her teeth cleaned, the dentist asked if we were planning to do anything about her teeth, which are misaligned, each bottom tooth being one space forward of where it should be because of the way her jaw grew. Every dentist she has seen since she was six has asked what we are going to do about her teeth, so I am used to explaining that the orthodontist is keeping an eye on them, but this time, since Kim was thinking about the surgery, I asked the dentist what he thought about it all, and then he gave me a referral and I took Kim to see a second orthodontist and got his opinion.
His opinion was that Kim needed surgery to lengthen her upper jaw, and to raise her lower teeth! I was completely freaked out, although Kim was all for it! She would need to wear braces for a year or so to get the teeth lined up and then after the surgery it would all fit together. That was such a shock to my system that I needed to go home and take a nap!
So we discussed it at home, and I made an appointment to see the oral surgeon that Orthodontist #2 preferred, and that surgeon's receptionist was such a heinous bitch that by the time I got done making the appointment, I was pretty much determined that we needed to go back to Orthodontist #1 and see what he had to say about it all so that we could use his preferred oral surgeon, instead.
Today we went back to the first orthodontist, taking with us the letter from the second orthodontist to see if Dr #1 agreed with the recommendations of Dr #2. Which he did, but he wants us to consult with an oral surgeon in Chicago, and since I am still fuming over the way that receptionist acted when I called, I am going to cancel the appointment I made with the Dr. #2's favorite surgeon, and we're going to go see the Dr in Chicago. With whom it takes 4 months to get an appointment, so Kim will be seeing him in August.
In the meantime we will be trying to get our insurance company to agree to cover all of this. It's been a rough day.
I'm trying add a comments option, but it needs work.
4:52 p.m. - 2006-05-04
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