The four year battle

Before any treatment could begin, the following conditions needed to be satisfied as requested by my hospital:


a) Excellent oral hygiene
b) Staying in the same location throughout the treatment, in my case this was London.


To ensure that treatment goes to plan, you are assigned an orthodontics consultant who oversees the whole project and makes sure it is going to plan. Typically to assess your bite, the procedure that is typically initially taken place is to take moulds of your teeth, X-rays, and standard braces are normally put into place to make sure that your teeth are aligned correctly prior to surgery. You then have another consultant who in effect is a surgeon, his role is to do any surgical procedure involving your bite and that’s it. This obviously varies between individual, but one thing for sure moulds will be taken as they need to assess how bad your malocclusion is before putting forward a plan of action.

In 2005 at the age of 19, I was first put forward to a different orthodontic consultant to the one I now have. Anyway, the situation became complicated as she was very unhappy that I would be studying in Aberdeen during term time. If it wasn't this, then she would nitpick on me due to my plaque levels. To cut a very long story short, the first stage of treatment did not get rolling (braces) due to my previous orthodontic consultant being stubborn and difficult. This resulted in me taking a gap year at 22 as I was adamant to get this issue resolved as soon as possible. That and I wanted to have some real world experience for a while.

I remember during this period of my life feeling very depressed by the whole thing, when you are a young man, you want to be your best self physically as you are playing the dating game and socially it did affect me immensely psychologically. As I couldn't smile with my teeth touching (I have been asked on more than one occasion by girls I have courted to smile with my teeth during a photo taken with them), my face (although not noticeable to others) being asymmetric, jaw pains, linguistically being affected - my bite has resulted in me sounding very nasal for example (due to the jaw being connected to the nose), and my pronunciation of certain words is not perfect as it requires phonetically for my bite to touch. For instance back in the day I took a module at university to learn Spanish for the banter, I learnt from a Spanish girl on a drunken night out that to pronounce the word "Espaniol", you will find that to do this correctly requires your teeth to touch. In the German language there are many many words that require this, and it was little things like this that dented my confidence badly over time. Saying that despite its drawbacks, I have had to learn to adapt to this issue rather then let it dictate my reality, due to the demands of an active social life even if it is subconciously in the back of my mind.

Furthermore, aside from the above, not getting anywhere with my previous orthodontic consultant added to the frustration and pain, if say my oral hygiene was perfect for example she would complain that I was studying in Aberdeen, and as I am not in London throughout term time, treatment could not begin due to hospital policy. She was very happy however for me to get treated in Aberdeen despite the fact that:

a) I am not in Aberdeen for most of the year anyway! So it is no different if I get treated there or in London. If anything, getting treated in London would have been logically a better idea due to my family being here!

b) Any operation during term time would seriously disrupt my studies due to the post recovery period following any operation involving my jaw.

Leaving me to think what is the difference, even if I got treated in Aberdeen they would have the same problems. Given the above I had to take a calculated risk, I had no choice but to take matters in my own hands as I realised that she saw me as another patient with no power; she was on an ego trip. Adamant to get the ball moving, first and foremost I eradicated each excuse one by one. To ensure that she could not complain about my oral hygiene I would get my teeth cleaned by my dentist the day before my appointment. This however had no effect, as the problem then was Aberdeen. With this seriously pissing me off as I was unable to reach a compromise despite their flawed logic, I kept a record recording everything that had been said (complete with dates and the name of the person who said it), built a case and brought this topic up with my local member of parliament. I just was not happy that she expected me to stop my studies during a critical period of my life when my schedule at university is flexible enough to work around. It was logically all utter bullshit to me, and it came across as though she didn't want to treat me.

In the end, my actions had a positive outcome, my previous orthodontic consultant who was overseeing the project moved position, and was replaced by another one. I have had no problems with the new one since.

After this happened, I felt very proud of myself as my hard work paid off. I fought and won.
So my advice to ANYONE else going through similar problems with consultants of any nature is to stand up and show them that you can't be pushed around, by first trying to reach a compromise with them. If this fails get their superiors on their tales that are no way affiliated with the hospital trust (due to bias), but rather are politicians or highly influential people that will listen to you because they need your votes and directly/indirectly affect decision making within the hospital with regards to funding etc etc.