:)

Well, yesterday proved to be an interesting day! I took Nate to the UMKC Dental School to have his teeth looked at. I have NEVER driven downtown KC before, so I knew this would be quite the adventure! Thankfully it wasn't rush hour, as there was plenty enough traffic anyways! It actually went really well, until we got to around the dental school. For some reason, they seem to have forgotten street signs! And there are a ton of one-way streets! YIKES! Thankfully, we'd left in plenty of time, but we ended up driving around and around the 3 blk. area, until we could figure out where to park, because nothing was making sense. Plus, you have Children's Mercy Hospital and Truman Hospital down there and all kinds of traffic in and out of what they call "Hospital Hill". It was interesting! LOL

Then, we finally make it inside and that was a whole new experience! There is a HUGE waiting room and tons of people! I guess the student dentists only take patients at 9am and 1pm, so there's a huge mass of people and then each dentist comes out and gets their patient at those times. Once we were finally with our dentist, David, things went great.

I was very impressed with David. He was professional, kind, gentle with Nate, and was very personable. It's kinda crazy in there because there's all these student dentists being overseen by three professors, and such, and it takes a LONG time to get everything done. We were there 2 hours. However, I was impressed with how things went, actually. David still has 1 1/2 years before graduating, but I can already tell he'll make a great dentist. He explained everything to me and was great. Nate really liked him. And...he even offered to go ahead and book and appt. for Brennan next week....otherwise, you have to go through this long process because there's quite the wait! So, I was really glad about that!

They do pretty much everything there: check-ups, cleanings, cavities/fillings, x-rays, some orthodontic work, etc. It's quite the process. And, everything is 1/3 to 1/2 of what it would cost in the normal dentist office. It cost us $83.00 for the check-up, full panoramic x-rays, bite-wing x-rays, cleaning, & flouride treatment. I was impressed! The only bad thing is you have to pay for it all upfront and then the insurance company sends you a check. But, we can deal with that.

Now to the bad news........

Unfortunately, Nate has inherited his Dad's teeth! LOL Meaning - they're terrible! He has too many teeth for his mouth. Thus, he need extensive orthodontic work! His lower jaw has shifted to the left to compensate and he has teeth underneath that can't come in because of no room. He has another tooth coming in behind everything. When you look at the x-rays, you can see it's quite the mess! They do braces at UMKC; however, they don't do this much ortho work, because it'll take too long, teeth will have to be pulled, and he'll need 'guided' help, and one dentist wouldn't be able to get everything done before they'd graduate. So, they won't do the work on Nate! :( So, now we have to find an orthodontist, otherwise they said he'll have teeth coming out all over in his mouth - out his gums and everything. Having had braces himself and terrible teeth, Steve totally understands. So, now we'll be on the hunt for an orthdontist! Bummer! But, we are thankful that he can still have all his cleanings and 'normal' dental work done at the school, which will save us money! :) And, I really liked David, so I'm glad we can still take the kids to him for at least all that stuff.

Now, we'll see about Brennan. I'm hopeful that because he's older, maybe his teeth have come in more and maybe they'll be able to do braces and such with him? I'd love it if we could save money on at least one child! LOL Our dentist back in Iowa quoted us about $9,000 for both of the boys to have braces, so we're trying to at least cut that down somewhat! We shall see....