"You need braces," the dental hygienist told me a couple of weeks ago.
"Maired."
"What's that?" She picked up the little plastic tube curled around my lower lip. "Close," she said.
I did, and the tube vacuumed up all the toothpaste and spit in my mouth.
"I don't need braces," I said. "I'm married."
I laughed a little. Who was this woman?
She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. You have to keep up your appearances."
I wanted to tell her that losing my muffin top would do more to keep up my appearances, but she revved up the toothbrush again.
"Open." She hung the vacuum back on my lower lip.
"Watch out for that new hygienist," I said that night to my husband, whose appointment was the following morning. "She's going to try to get you in braces."
And she did. Also, without my husband's permission, the office put in an estimate for a mouth guard. Seems that, like me, he grinds his teeth at night.
When he first saw my mouth guard 10 years ago, my husband laughed. It makes talking impossible and makes my upper lip protrude.
"Well, that's attractive," he said.
To say my husband snores is a gross understatement. My husband snores the wallpaper off the walls, the paint off the ceiling, the hair off my arms.
For 17 years, I told him he really ought to see a doctor about it. He scoffed. So I did what any good wife would do: I told his mother on him.
A week later, he went to the doctor. He was sent for a sleep study, in which he spent a night hooked up to all kinds of wires and gizmos while a technician watched him. When he awoke, several hundred dollars later, he was told what I'd been telling him for the entire span of our marriage: He has sleep apnea.
Being the type to explore all nonmedical alternatives first, I Googled "sleep apnea."
