So last week was checkup week in the house, with me having two visits to St. Mike’s and Jon having a quick consultation with an oral surgeon in Whitby (when and if he does the tooth removals, he’ll do them at Sick Kids, but he likes to consult in his own office).

I’ll deal with Jon’s visit first, since it’s the easy one.

Fact: Jon’s progress on his baby teeth—or if your mail-order DDS diploma arrived today, deciduous teeth—is very slow. This is not a panic to us, as one of our nieces has this issue too, and everything is fine, just slower.

The orthodontist, Dr. Dagys, would like to remove Jon’s baby eye teeth (one per quadrant = 4) to give his front teeth a little room to spread out for a year or so, and gradually she’ll start her equipment magic.

The oral surgeon, Dr. Nish, thinks more removals are coming in the future, and that the eye teeth don’t buy too much more room. The removal of four teeth alone will require Jon to be anesthetized, and although anesthesia is relatively safe, there is always risk. Since he believes that Dr. Dagys is going to have him remove more teeth in the future, he feels that he should remove three teeth per quadrant (=12) in one fell swoop and Dr. Dagys can fit Jon with temporary dentures to fill the immense chewing surface gap. Mind you, Dr. Nish is a bit concerned by Jon’s late schedule, and admits that there’s a risk of Jon’s permanent teeth never emerging, despite their existence on x-rays.

Dr. Dagys has not told us about further removals, and when you combine that with the low, but real, risk of lack of the emergence of the permanent teeth, we think 12 at a time is a tad on the extreme side.

So we’re gonna let the two docs debate this one, and come back to us with a proposal that we can discuss. The nice thing is that both doctors are giving us a lot of the raw facts and their concerns, so we’ll be able to examine the new-and-improved proposed solution carefully.