Frankenstein's helper

AAH’s orthodontist, a.k.a. Dr. Frankenstein, has me performing a gruesome task at the moment: prying apart her palate twice a day with a metal screw he’s attached to the roof of her mouth.

Frankenstein has determined that AAH’s palate is too narrow to accomodate her teeth [‘dental crowding’ they call it; hence the requirement for his services] and he will probably have to pull a couple before he attaches the braces to her upper teeth [he's already put them on the lower teeth]. However, before he does that he wishes to widen her palate with a something called a ‘rapid palate expander’ or ‘hyrax’. Because the segments of the skull are not quite coagulated this will widen her palate and allow all her teeth to be lined up all in a pretty row.

In other words, what Dr. Frankenstein is doing is prying apart AAH’s skull to expand it so that it forms a gap that will gradually fill up with bone [we hope]. My job is to stick a ‘key’ type of thing in her ‘hyrax’ every morning and every night, and turn it to facilitate the prying process. Yech!

The thought of it gives me the heebie-jeebies, expecially when AAH tells me how she can feel it running right up her face to her forehead, and when I see there’s already a small gap between her front teeth. I just hope Frankenstein knows what he’s doing. I’ve done some reading online and the overwhelming majority of articles are very clinical and report no side effects except for ‘positive’ ones like improved breathing, etc. However, there was one I saw tonight that went on about potential neurological damage, and while it doesn’t seem particularly credible it still gave me a heavy sinking feeling and had me kicking myself internally for not having gotten a second opinion [or three]. But because Frankenstein is the leading orthodontist in the country and dismissively assured us that he’d done loads of these kinds of operations in the past and all was perfectly fine, I swallowed his reasoning whole. However, I’m resolved to get on the blower tomorrow and make some calls to see what I can find out. Until then, I guess I’ll be turning the screw.

IT’S BEEN A BEAUTIFUL WEEKEND…
Primarily because there has been hardly any wind, and as you will know if you’ve been hanging around the IWR for a while, the weather is always beautiful in Iceland when there’s no wind. Current temps 11°C and sunrise was at 07.16 and sunset at 19.22.