All the more power to you for getting that refund, Carol! Wow ... an electric charge zapping you constantly, due to dental, uh, mismanagement?? Yikes ... poor you! And you're right - personal health, choice of treatment(s) and managing the results of same ARE the responsibility of the dental consumer. So it's important to educate yourself by asking the right questions at critical moments, and to insist on being treated fairly.

Reading your story, I'm thinking it would sure be nice to get some compensation for the orthodontic horrors I suffered as a kid - for myself AND for my parents, who shelled out megabucks for it for years! Even though my own teeth were acceptably straight to begin with, when my oldest sister started showing signs of the 'overbite' that tends to run in my family, my parents decided to take us ALL to the orthodontist for this great new "preventative" 'dontistry, whether we appeared to need it or not.

Well, I highly suspect that years of wearing appliances like this attached to headgear like this for 18 hours a day set me up for a lifetime of battling gum and bone infections in my mouth. From childhood throughout my teenage years, my poor teeth were always loose, jawbones aching and gums sore from the pressure of those devices. They are difficult, if not impossible for a child to clean too - and therefore always unsanitary, accumulating bacteria and spreading it all through the mouth. By the time I was 18, even though I did take meticulous care of my teeth and visited the dentist regularly, I was told I had periodontal disease. Sheesh, I wonder why!

But that's not the worst of it. As a little kid I had this very nasty nervous habit of biting my lower lip . The orthodontist (name was Boucher, but us kids dubbed him Dr Butcher in time ) really didn't like this. It would throw all my teeth out of line eventually, he said.

So he cemented this silver band with a sharp little hook sticking out of it to one of my lower front teeth. And every time I drew my lower lip over my teeth - to bite it, to make certain sounds for speaking or even just to drink from a fountain - that hook would cut into the inside of my lip. So I suffered a permanent lesion inside my mouth for years, swollen and painful.

BY the time I was about 9 I'd discovered how to bend it backwards after each appointment so it wouldn't cut into me anymore - and ole Butcher would report this to my parents for disciplinary purposes, bend it back out again, and file it even sharper next visit.

I'm pretty sure that this, plus the bacteria-infested devices he had me wear till I was about 17, set me up for a lifetime of battling periodontal disease. Not to mention a bad attitude and a self-defeating resolve to avoid dentists period, except in absolute emergencies.

It would be interesting to hear a professional's opinion about this - like yours, Janine. I have found a few sites online where former orthodontic patients tell similar tales, but who knows?? And anyway, ole Butcher is probably either tottering into his grave or in it by now ... so I guess it's too late to try for any compensation!

Thanks again for listening to my tales of woe ...

daylia