i was under the assumption that i had unwittingly tossed DS's retainer into the trash at my inlaws house when we were visiting in the fall. He swore it was in a napkin when he had his lunch, I cleaned up so he could go play but wasn't paying attention and didn't realize it until the trash had been picked up.
we did not replace the retainer since we knew he would need a second set of braces in a few years and were waiting for some adult teeth to come in ( I Know I know that's a whole nuther subject though) Ortho was fine with that plan.
Soooooo MIL calls me up this week to ask me if this strange piece of plastic belongs to one of my kids. apparently she found it in the spare room. The lost retainer has been found.
I know i should just call the ortho but i have to work up to it because the whole thing is a bit embarrassing.
So how do i clean this so it is safe to even put back in his mouth to see if it even remotely fits after 6 mo??
and what other crazy crapolla has turned up after you thought it was lost for good??
You don't have to be embarrassed. Just call and say that MIL found the retainer because it wasn't thrown in the garbage in the first place. Then ask whether he should wear it or not.
They've heard SO much worse, really. You do NOT have to be embarrassed at all...
OK, my friends son was walking around, in tears at not knowing where his retainer was...she's telling him how expensive they are, and how he needs to be more responsible and they searched and searched...only for him to realize, it was already in his mouth!!!!! LOL!
oh heavens. this doesn't even register on the radar for 'weird retainer stories' your ortho will have heard.
just make the appointment, tell them the short version (we lost the retainer but TADA! found it again) and ask them to clean it and re-fit it.
as for long-lost missing items, i posted a while back about finding my mother's wedding rings, that i assumed were long lost or buried with her, in my recently deceased stepmother's things. 4 decades lost! that was a nice gift from both of my moms. :)
khairete
S.
This is my favorite lost and found story...
My aunt was purse shopping at a large department store. She found a purse she liked and her husband paid for it with all their other purchases. When she got home, she realized her original purse was gone. ONE YEAR LATER she went shopping at that same department store and FOUND her original purse hanging on a sale rack, still with her wallet and all her stuff in it!!! We still joke that she has such terrible taste in purses, no one looked at her ugly old purse for a whole year.
Ah yes, digging through the trash for retainers. I remember those days well. And I actually found it in the kitchen trash one time.
Don't be embarrassed, it's a common enough occurrence.
Just soak it in Efferdent and it should be good to go.
What turned up for us was a treasured item of my son's from when he was about 4. He was a huge The Hobbit fan (the animated movie) and liked to go around in this gray striped bathrobe he had and pretend he was Bilbo. We happened to take a pit stop at a book store on our 6 hour drive to visit my parents, and the Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings was just in the theaters... they had a display table with book marks that had a little metal "ring" attached to the ribbons on the book mark. We got it for our son. He was THRILLED. He kept up with it for years. My mother even crocheted him a "chain" out of brown thread to wear it around his neck on. He left it in a bathroom at an Outback Steakhouse (hung it on the hook inside the stall door) when he was about 7. Strangely, my SIL and her husband stopped in the same restaurant about an hour after we left.. she called me to say "hey! We're in town eating..." . Shortly after her call is when son realized he left it in the bathroom. Called her back, and she sent her husband to go look for it. He recovered it and we met up later and he got it back.
Fast forward through two household moves. Somewhere along the line, we thought at my mom's house (6 hours away) it went missing. It just disappeared. No ideas where or when, because he had stopped taking it everywhere with him. And his room had been cleaned out multiple times and we just figured he had put it in something that had gotten thrown out. Well, about 2 birthdays ago, I put his gift in a "recycled" gift bag from the guest room closet. It sat for a few days until his birthday. He opened the gift and kept digging around in the bag. I said, "that's it.. there isn't anything else". So he dumped the bag upside down and SURPRISE!! "The Ring" fell out of the bag. We were all stunned.
He still has it.
Why are you embarrassed?
Just call and they'll have you come in and refit the retainer. For cleaning: give it a scrub with tooth paste and soak it in some mouth wash.
Let me tell you embarrassing about retainers. My middle son had a retainer. the first week he got it he was in about 7th grade. he and a friend walked several blocks from our home to a mcdonalds. he took it out laid it on the tray while he ate. he comes home an hour later and says lunch was good. I said how did it go with the retainer? he looked like the deer in the headlights. took off on his bike back to the mcdonalds. they had already emptied the garbage can that he had dumped his tray in. I had followed him in the car and explained to the manager what happened. luckily the manager had kids of his own lol. he gave us each some food service gloves and had his worker pull the top bags of garbage out of the dumpster. they had been semi compacted. and we went through them to find it. again luck on our side my son had ate a salad. the retainer had ended up inside the plastic salad bowl and was protected when it got crunched. we took it home cleaned it off really good with toothpaste and listerine. and he wore it. never left it anywhere again.
Sorry it won't fit anymore. Happened to me more times than I care to admit and I'm grown!
I lost my keys once and the keys to my gpa house was on it. Well he refused to give another, paranoid that some how some way someone would find them and know they went to his house and break in. lol Anyway like 2 yrs later I was getting a new couch and when they removed the old one, stuff fell out. Amongst the stuff were my keys!
My husband dropped his retainer in a trash bucket full of paper, which his mom then took and dumped into the wood stove! Needless to say there was no way that retainer would fit again after being burned in the stove!
As for lost items, my daughters and I went to a local toy store to pick some things out for her birthday. Instead of a paper registry, the store had buckets they would give you and you would physically take the items you wanted and put them in the bucket and then your kid's family and friends could come and just pick something out of the bucket to buy your kid instead of having to roam the whole store. Well, while we were picking things out, my daughter had been carrying an item of her own from home, and I wish I could remember what the specific item was, but at some point it ended up in the bucket without our knowing. Soon after, my MIL went by the store to pick something out and recognized my daughter's toy in the bucket. The store knew it wasn't theirs, so she took it home (along with other things she bought) and wrapped it up and gave it to my daughter on her birthday. At first she was a little bummed to get a gift she already had (we still didn't realize hers was missing), but then we were all shocked when we found it was actually hers!
Another time, my MIL was searching her house for hours to find one of my daughter's shoes before I came to pick her up and she finally gave up and went to the fridge to get a drink and yep, there was the shoe, in the fridge! My daughter was about 3, so who knows what made her think that was a good spot to put it, but now whenever someone in the family loses something, we all say "Check the fridge!"
I'd call the ortho and ask. I bet he's heard weirder things.
When my DH was married to his ex, she lost her keys. A year and a move later, they were putting up the Christmas tree and her keys appeared on the floor. Must have been tucked into the Christmas stuff by my then-toddler SS and fell out when it was all unpacked.
When I was about 8, I took all my change (much to the dismay of the cashier) to buy my mom a wallet as a birthday gift. My mom lost the wallet very quickly and was so upset. She knew what a big deal it was to me, but she did all she could to try to find it, retraced her steps, went back to the store. A long while late (a year, maybe more), she was putting on the same long coat she'd worn and felt something in the lining. The fabric wallet had gotten down through a hole in the pocket and gotten lost in the lining of her full-length coat.
I had a charm made when my son was in his first year. the picture was a vintage look. I wore it daily and received tons of compliments. My daughter broke the chain when she was in her first year. I zipped it into my wallet and it was lost when we returned home. My daughter is 4 1/2 now and was helping me pair socks recently. I told her to toss her baby socks into the rag pile. Something made her stick her little hand in and she found the charm!
My oldest brought his beloved blanket to his grandmas house 11 hours away. We could not find it anywhere when it was time to leave. Mil found it 6 mths later between the bed and a hope chest. He refused to take it anywhere after that. It was too valuable to him!
Isn'tthisfun: now that's one Ring story to rule them all!
My mom likes to put valuables in a safe place, which she later sometimes forgets. Her diamond wedding jewlery - necklace, brooch, pendant went missing for years only to turn up wrapped in tissue, stuffed in an empty cigar box with our long forgotten nursery ryhme books.
If every anything goes missing, we say maybe it'll turn up like Mom'd diamonds.
good luck to you and yours,
F. B.
How can a mom be embarrassed? Remember giving birth in front of strangers? Our bits all out there with people all around..all the exams prior and since?
Anyway..
Lots of good advice already about cleaning it...then let your child try it.. If it fits great.... If not just let the Dentist know.. When you deal with kids.. All sorts of stuff can happen.
Most likely it won't fit....
Way back long ago, I had a retainer, and went on a 3 week school trip (includeintg backpacking and camping). I didn't want to take the retainer for fear I'd lose it.
Well, when I got back and tried to put it on, my teeth had shifted just enough to make it not fit.
Ortho said at that point to not worry about it.
Why be embarrassed? This kind of stuff has to happen all the time! Laugh it off and call the ortho. I think that is who you can best tell you how to clean it or whether you should even try to re-use it due to shifting that has probably taken place.
I went on vacation and swore I left all my jewelry. Nothing worth anything, but I searched all over, called the B&B we stayed at, and the airport, and nothing. Found it YEARS later when packing the suitcase for my son, the bag containing it all had fallen under the fabric backing inside the suitcase.
