The Nielsens: Goodbye Expander, Hello Headgear!

Yesterday I took Clifford in for one of his many Ortho appointments. I had to bump up his appointment that was scheduled for next week to now after we noticed the skin on the roof of his mouth was starting to grow over one side of his expander (ouch!). Plus it was time for him to get fitted for his headgear. So I pulled him out of school early and off we went. The doctor decided that it was indeed time for the expander to come out, which made Clifford very happy. They numbed up the area that was growing over the expander and snipped the metal piece off, leaving behind the two metal teeth caps which is where the head gear fits on (Clifford decided to keep the metal piece and has it hanging in his room!). As for the headgear, they gave me the run down on how to insert it. Easy Peasy. Clifford is suppose to wear it right after he comes home from school until he wakes up the next morning. He was concerned about if he had friends over or goes outside to play. The nurse and I assured him there was a little leeway on this, though I joked if he keeps getting lippy with me that I'd make him wear it in front of his friends LOL. He's looking at wearing this for about six months, so basically at the end of the year we'll be all done with phase one for Clifford. The nurse did explained that typically at that point the doctor will re-evaluate him and see if we're done for now or if we'll need to go straight to braces. Last summer at our first evaluation, the doctor did say braces would come when Clifford was 13....I'm holding him to that. Peter and I just paid off off the remaining balance for phase one two months early, so it would be nice to have some breathing room, especially since Kristjan's turn is potentially right around the corner (it's really hard to believe that a tiny piece of metal can cost so much!). Also during our visit, the nurse noticed Clifford's mouth/lips were super dry. I explained to her that we just couldn't get it to heal up with anything (vaseline, coconut oil, etc). It's been like this for months and months, but our primary doctor wasn't too worried about it and we were told to keep re-applying vaseline. So she had our dentist, who happened to be working that day, come take a look. Turns out he has some sort of fungal infection going on. It's nothing contagious, but does require a prescription. So at least that will finally get taken care of.

So that's the highlight of that. We get to skip the month of May for any type of dental appointments (yay!!, since we've literally been there at least once a month for general check ups or ortho appts). Next check ups are in June :)

Dr. Teng taking a look at Clifford's mouth