Another lost orthodontic brace

It was something like a scene from Derry Girls or The Inbetweeners, but last week we actually had a teenage patient phone the practice pretending to be his own father to cancel the appointment he was meant to attend that day.

So…. his parents would think he was taking time off ...

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that I don’t have much interest in football, but I do work as part of a team. So there are things to learn from successful football teams and there would appear to be a load of them in the USA this summer because of the World Cup.

I heard a report on the news that someone with a lot of time on their hands, or who was paid (I presume handsomely) for it had calculated the speed that various players moved over the course of a football match. The player that moved the slowest was apparently Lionel Messi who was ...

I had a patient in today who lost his brace. I asked him what happened.

“I took my brace out and tucked it into the waistband of my football shorts”

Me: “…and then you played a game of football?”

He: “No, I ate a packet of biscuits”

And when he’d finished the pack of biscuits he went to put the brace back in, but it wasn’t there any more.”

I’m not a nutritionist, so I can’t comment with any authority about the merits of eating a pack of biscuits between meals, but if you have a brace that you’re meant to wear then take care of it.

In practical terms, for ...