Hygenist visit yesterday, once again told my flossing is not good enough and warned of severe consequences of not doing it right. Once again a schedule set for what I should be doing and how. Today I'm depressed, I know that there is zero chance I can comply with these instructions, and it's not because I'm feckless. I could spend half-an-hour a day attempting to floss my teeth, and would still not have done half the job I'm being told to do, because it's impossible.
The problems are: -
- about a quarter of the gaps towards the back, I can't see what I'm doing, cannot consistently even find (by feeling my way) the gaps I'm supposed to be inserting floss into, cannot keep track of which ones I have and haven't done, if I manage to do anything at all, which I mostly don't.
- the majority of gaps in my mouth, the teeth are touching each other, it's very difficult and sometimes impossible to squeeze floss between the teeth, I have to apply huge force to get floss in, the times I manage it at all, and then it's so difficult to get the floss back out that if feels like I'm going to rip out my teeth and fillings, and the floss gets shredded on the way out
- as a consequence of 2, I have to wind new lengths of floss around my fingers several times during a session, and that's for a session in which I probably give up having got floss into fewer than half the gaps
- I cannot keep track of the gaps I've flossed by moving from one gap to the adjacent one, because of the need to wind a new bit of floss round my fingers after virtually every gap I do manage to floss.
I do use a water pick, which is 90% effective, but hygenist says it's not good enough.
Interdental brushes are not much use, I don't think, as they only replicate what the water pick does reasonably well. I think they only clean between teeth, they don't go down the sides of teeth, under the gum.
I've tried the little holders with floss on, the floss was the wrong kind, too thick to fit through gaps. If I could get it in, because the floss is round rather than flat, the surface area is too small to clean the teeth efficiently. They come with a toothpick at the opposite end whose only function seems to be to stab holes in my cheek or tongue when I'm using the flossing end.
When I complained about floss issues, a dentist suggested using interdental brushes, when I pointed out that I couldn't get the brush into some gaps and other gaps were so big the brushes didn't touch the sides, he explained in all seriousness that I should have several sizes of brushes and a personally customised wall chart map of to remind me which size to use for each of the circa 30 gaps between my teeth. Even if that is a thing that people do, and he said it was, I don't see how this works, as I can't see how I would reliably map chart instructions to actual gaps.
If I try to explain the issues, I just sound like a feckless person making excuses. Also, I tend not to remember the issues in detail, because they occurred months earlier, after my previous visit, after which I gave up and returned to only using water pick.
I've found some new floss holders, that use the best kind of floss for me, PTFE flat tape. I put the likelihood that these will produce satisfactory results at about 5%. No doubt they will work in some gaps, but not all. As I can't memorise a mental map of which of 30 gaps are worth even attemping to clean, I will spend inordinate amounts of time trying impossible gaps every day, before I give up on trying to use them.