Corona FAQ

Special message from Dr. Gorton During Covid-19 Shelter-in-Place Order

 

Special message from Dr. Gorton

Hello, everyone!

Dr. Jasmine Gorton here. On behalf of the entire Gorton & Schmohl team, I wanted to send you and your families warm greetings and well wishes! Hopefully you and yours are doing your best to stay healthy and taking all the necessary precautions to keep others safe as well!

While we are all feeling the impact of the timing of the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order, please rest assured that your orthodontic treatments will continue as planned and largely without issue.

For our patients in braces, your wires will continue to straighten your teeth. Our recommendation to you is to continue maintaining excellent oral hygiene practices (making sure you use the Clinpro 5000 fluoride toothpaste you received from us) and also maintain a healthy braces-friendly diet! Please reference the braces food list you received, which is also on our website, and steer clear of hard, sticky, overly chewy foods that could cause things to come loose.

If you are wearing rubber bands as part of your recommended treatment, please continue! We’d like to see how you’ve done with your rubber bands and what your bite looks like so there will be some instructions later on in the video about how to take pictures of your teeth that we can use to evaluate your current bite.

For our Invisalign patients, you should have by now received all the aligners in your current set, as our office team has been mailing those out as they have become available. We encourage you to continue with wearing your aligner 20-22 hours per day, using your chewies regularly, and using your accelerator device daily if you elected to purchase one.

If you feel that you are going to be running out of aligners in the near future, we recommend slowing down your pace. If you customarily switch your aligners twice per week, which is the case for some of our youngest patients using Invisalign with Acceledent, you may want to switch once a week for the time being. If you usually switch your aligners weekly, you may want to slow down to every two weeks if you think you may run out soon. If you usually switch every two weeks, please stay with the same schedule of aligner changes.

Finally, if you’ve reached the last aligner of your set and have worn it full-time for a couple of weeks, please switch to night-time only with your last aligner so that they can hold your teeth in their current position.  Please don’t stop wearing your aligners! And, as always, please do not throw away any backup aligners you may need if your current aligner breaks or gets lost!

For those patients with expanders, please stop turning after the prescribed number of turns has been completed. Please do not continue turning after the prescribed number of turns until you have submitted evaluation photos for assessment of progress.

While we are only seeing emergency patients in our office at this time per the recommendations of all governing health care bodies at the local, state and national levels, we want to reassure you all that we are available by phone, text, email, and video.

If you’ve subscribed with our dental monitoring program, please continue your weekly scans for evaluation. For everyone else, we’d like to extend an invitation for a virtual appointment for all our Invisalign patients due for a check, our braces patients who are currently wearing rubber bands, and expander patients who were still turning their expander when the shelter-in-place order started so that we can check-in and evaluate your progress.

We also want to let you know that we have virtual consultations available on our website for new treatment interest and inquiries. We have a video coming up from Lindsay, our Treatment Coordinator, demonstrating how to take photos of the teeth easily at home to help us with our assessments. You are welcome to email your photos to all three doctors at [email protected] with any questions or concerns you may have.


Click here for Lindsay’s tutorial on how to take photos of your teeth

Click here for Covid-19 FAQ

Click here for Cornonavirus Updates

Orthodontic Instructions During Covid-19 Shelter-in-Place Order

Corona Update and Alternatives - Marin Orthodontist

Corona Update and Alternatives

Corona FAQ

Taking Photos of Your Teeth Tutorial

 

Taking Photos of Your Teeth and Face

Please use mouth retractors instead of spoons if you have them!
Submit pictures of your face (from the side, the front, and smiling) as in the photos above along with your teeth photos and add a “mouth open” shot as in the photos below.
**If you are in Invisalign treatment, please take TWO sets of photos: one with your aligners on and one without. Please email us both sets**

 

Taking photos of your teeth examples

 

Special Message from Lindsay

Hi, everyone!

I’m Lindsay, the treatment coordinator at Gorton & Schmohl Orthodontics. We wanted to let all our patients know that we are here for you guys during this tough time! You can still reach us by phone or text, email or video. I’ll be showing you this tutorial to use for taking photos of your teeth that you can send to us for evaluation.

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GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

Larkspur California in 2020 | WHAT’S HERE? | LOCAL EVENTS

Visiting family and friends in Larkspur California is always fun, but the fun is doubled when there are interesting things to do and see in town or in nearby San Francisco. Many visitors look for theme parks or musical acts to attend, but these aren’t the only entertainment around. In this post, we’ll show you what’s on in Larkspur California in 2020.

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three doctors

Dr. Gorton Passed Board Recertification

Did you know? All three doctors at Gorton & Schmohl Orthodontics are Board Certified Orthodontic Specialists.

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Summer Toothbrush Contest

Beyond Differences

beyond differences

An Orthodontist Who Cares about Preventing Social Isolation

Social isolation often begins in middle school and continues in high school because adolescents are prone to developing cliques that exclude others. While teachers may combat this behavior in classrooms with group activities that require cooperative teamwork, students still exclude others in locations such as the school cafeteria or activities after school. Beyond Differences located in San Francisco is a nonprofit organization that is devoted to educating the public about the detrimental effects of social isolation and offer ways to stop the behavior during the sensitive adolescent years. Anyone can donate to Beyond Differences, and the organization already has an important sponsor located in Larkspur, Calif. Gorton & Schmohl Orthodontics has two orthodontists who want to promote including others in all activities to create a feeling of camaraderie.

Beyond Differences Focuses on Stopping Social Isolation

Beyond Differences has three ways to prevent social isolation in middle and high school environments, including:

• No One Eats Alone – designed to encourage socializing during lunch
• Be Kind Online – discouraging unkind behavior online
• Be the One – a pledge and commitment to not exclude others

Beyond Difference dispenses its important message with an online website, videos and publications that are suitable for teachers, students and parents who want to implement and follow the suggestions made by the organization. Anyone interested in preventing social isolation in schools can request curriculum designed for teaching lessons or newsletters for parents and the general public. All lessons begin by helping people understand what social isolation is and how it affects anyone who is perceived as different from others. Some of the issues covered concern including classmates who have mental or physical challenges.

The orthodontists working at Gorton & Schmohl Orthodontics are happy to sponsor Beyond Differences because many of their patients are teenagers struggling with social isolation. The adolescent patients visiting this orthodontic facility frequently need to wear headgear, retainers or braces to correct abnormalities of their facial or mouth’s structure. Conditions such as cleft lip or palate can cause deformities of the mouth that require many years of orthodontic treatment in order to repair the positions of teeth so that an individual can speak properly, chew food and have a beautiful smile. In many cases, an individual undergoing orthodontic treatment is ostracized by their peers because they look different.