Metal Mouth Message Board

I live in a city with 1,5 million people. I go to a very busy practice. Very high recommended, modern, respectable.
I will be honest with you, after my initial consultation, I could have set an appointment to start my treatment the very next day if I wanted to, but I set it for a week later because of my work schedule.
It took your ortho's office a very looooooooong time to start your treatment. I just cannot imagine how busy can they be? Is it a big office? Is it a small office? Are you in United States? If yes, what part? How many orthodontic assistants do they have?.....I don't know, give me some clues so that I can understand why it took them so long...I'm curious.

felicia wrote:I live in a city with 1,5 million people. I go to a very busy practice. Very high recommended, modern, respectable.
I will be honest with you, after my initial consultation, I could have set an appointment to start my treatment the very next day if I wanted to, but I set it for a week later because of my work schedule.
It took your ortho's office a very looooooooong time to start your treatment. I just cannot imagine how busy can they be? Is it a big office? Is it a small office? Are you in United States? If yes, what part? How many orthodontic assistants do they have?.....I don't know, give me some clues so that I can understand why it took them so long...I'm curious.

Hey felicia,

I'm not in the US, I'm in Melbourne Australia. The office that I go to is 1 of 5 locations throughout Melbourne. I believe my orthodontist works at more than 1 of these offices, so he may only be at the one I go to a few times a week. I don't think they would give me an appointment at another office because all my records would be in the one place, and it's a fair distance to the other ones.

Every time I would book in for another consult, or to take my moulds and x-rays, they would give me the next available appointment which would be a few months away. They would also put me on a waiting list in case there was a cancellation before my scheduled appointment.

So I think maybe he'll have a set number of available appointments per week for different things. For example, a certain number of new people coming to see him, a certain number of people coming to put there braces on, and a certain number of people coming to get adjustments. These are the only reasons I can think of which would make my waiting time so long.

So yeah, it has taken a while. I'm just glad I'll finally be getting my braces on in about 2 weeks.

That makes sense now...Wow, we are so spoiled here in United States. I wish it would that easy everywhere as it is here. I come from an eastern European country, where I've never even heard about braces when I was a teenager (I'm 27 now). I believe they do orthodontics in my country too by now, but I imagine it is very expensive and available only in the major cities.

See, my ortho did everything as fast as possible, but still focused on me getting my teeth healthy and ready. I had my consult, then a cleaning, then had moulds made and spacers put it, then more spacers, then brackets, then extractions, then finally wire. But that all took only a month or two, and all of the wait time was for things like making the spacers work or my mouth to heal.

The time between my consult and my bracing day was a little over a month. I could've gotten braced that next morning. However, I was scheduled to have all my wisdom teeth extracted and to get a crown placed on one of my teeth, so I had to go through surgery and the crown procedure before I could get braces. I had no idea that they could put them on so quickly!

I had my consultation in November 2007 and got my braces the following January.