THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504260036
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
LAST WEEK Kyleen Michael said goodbye to popcorn. She said sayonara to peanuts. Auf Wiedersehen to ice. Adios to corn on the cob. Adieu to chips and crunchy pizza crust.
This left the 14-year-old wondering what was left in life.
``Can I chew gum?'' she asked weakly.
``No, no, a thousand times no,'' retorted Dr. Steven Hearne, her orthodontist.
Michael grinned, flashing brand new braces on her upper teeth. Then she brushed her tongue across her braces and pulled her lip down over the dental hardware.
``What she's doing is the orthodontic grimace,'' Hearne said, joking. ``All the kids do it at first, it just feels so strange to have braces on.''
Michael had a right to grimace. She'd just spent almost an hour lying prostrate on the orthodontist's chair, her mouth stretched to unbelievable width by a mechanical mouth-opening device while Hearne methodically glued ceramic brackets to her teeth, then threaded a flexible wire through the brackets.
When it was over, Michael sat up and looked a bit dazed.
She had heard the stories - about how much braces hurt, how awful they would feel.
But she just shrugged.
``It feels funny, that's all,'' said the ninth-grade softball player from Gates County High School as she did the orthodontic grimace a few more times.
It seems every kid has braces these days. In fact, to Michael and her friends they're pretty cool.
``I don't mind having them at all,'' she said before the nickel titanium wires were attached. ``As long as they don't have to stay too long.''
She knows why she's getting them: ``my canines popped out.''
They did indeed. Michael and her 11-year-old brother, Rusty, have what orthodontists call a ``crowded mouth'' - too many teeth trying to share the same space. To accommodate the crowded conditions, Michael's canine teeth began growing out of the top of her gums - leaving the freckled faced girl with a toothy smile.
Michael may need to have her ``pre-molars'' extracted to make room for the wayward canines. But Hearne is giving the braces six months before resorting to pulling teeth.
``Kyleen's case is kind of different,'' Hearne explained. ``Usually it's black or white, you either have to pull a few teeth or you don't. But Kyleen's on the borderline.''
Kyleen is also old, by current orthodontal standards. Kids are getting braces now mostly between 9 and 11. And some children as young as 7 have metal in their mouths.
``Those are the kids who really want braces, the young ones,'' said Hearne. ``It makes them really cool at school.''
On the other hand, young people like Kyleen, who want the braces off in a year or two, are highly motivated to take care of their orthodontal program to rush it along.
``She's turned into a fluoride nut,'' said her mother, Debbie Michael, an RN at Roanoke-Chowan hospital. ``She's completely cut out junk food - no more Gummi Bears, no more chewing gum. And she's brushing her teeth all the time.''
Debbie Michael is very sympathetic to the dental plight of her two children. She reckons they inherited their orthodontal problems from her side of the family - she and her three sisters all wore braces.
``I couldn't stand my orthodontist,'' Michael confessed. ``I was what they called a non-compliant patient.''
Non-compliant patients - those who wind up damaging their hardware and not taking care of their teeth - prolong their own treatment. In Debbie Michael's case she tripled her orthodontal time and wore braces for seven years.
Michael figured her own children might be more motivated than their mother, if they liked their orthodontist. So the Michael family, including father Russ Michael, a Virginia Beach police officer, shopped for an orthodontist the way people shop for a car. They interviewed six candidates, then held a family election - by secret ballot.
Hearne, the 39-year-old former surfer who taught orthodontics at MCV before opening his Suffolk office, won by unanimous vote.
On the day he was working on the Michael kids, Hearne was sporting a tropical shirt. It's all part of the treatment.
``I like to dress like this because it seems to help the kids relax,'' he explained. ``My goal is to make it as pleasant as possible for the children so they'll want to cooperate with their treatment.''
Like other area orthodontists, he tries to make it pleasant for the parents who have a big responsibility for the treatment - they pay for it.
Hearne offers a variety of payment plans: His office offers no-interest financing, he accepts major credit cards, he is part of an orthodontics-only credit program and he even guides some families into home equity loans which are tax-deductible.
Any way you pay for it, braces are expensive.
``I told my kids that what they have on their teeth is a used car, a very good used car,'' Debbie Michael said, laughing. ``It's going to cost us about $3,200 for each child for about two years of treatment including extractions (Kyleen is going to need her wisdom teeth pulled).''
In return for the oral ``used car,'' Kyleen promised to take care of her braces: to avoid hard foods that could crack the brackets, avoid sticky sweet food that will cause her teeth to decay and to stay away from the foods that make up a good part of most teenagers' diets.
``I'd like them off when I'm 16,'' she said, as she selected elastics in shades of Carolina blue, because she's aiming for Chapel Hill to study medicine after high school.
Hearne said lots of kids love braces when they're young. But by the time they're getting ready for proms they want the hardware off.
``I never give in to that,'' he said. ``I'm pretty much of an `I'll serve no wine before it's time' kind of guy.''
``It's too important to let something like a prom interfere with straightening the teeth.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOHN H. SHEALLY II/Staff
Dr. Steven Hearne begins fitting Kyleen Michaels, 14, for braces as
her brother Rusty, 11, looks on.
by CNB