Week 1

Ok ok..it hasn't been a week yet, but things are pretty steady state right now.  Braces went on March 15th, 2012.  The style I have are the Damon Braces.  Apparently they are the newest Damon braces style and I was only the second person at that practice to get them.  No ceramics though!!  I was highly upset that I was not a candidate for that.  I have a pretty small face (Severe Brachyfacial type is what it is called on the form).  I.E. I have a super flat jaw.

So with speed braces, my treatment will be 18-20 months largely due to how slow molars need to be moved.  Below shows the before pictures/mug shots and mold.

You can see on the left how I'm missing that tooth (which for the record no one ever noticed).  On the right side the lateral incisor I do have is twisted.



So now here I am 25 with braces.  I know I shouldn't talk about cost, but this experience is costing me quite a lot!  $250 for molds/xrays, $500 for oral surgeon, and $5,800 for the braces themselves (split up over 20 months thank goodness).  Overall getting the braces on wasn't too bad.  There was about 2 weeks between the surgery and the actual act of getting them on so it was just enough recovery that it didn't bother me a lot but not enough that it didn't hurt a little.  It was mostly he wisdom tooth scar and all of the stretching and proding.  Since I have two crowns, it took a little bit longer than planned.  It took a little over 2 hours for the entire process.  I got regular brackets on all of my teeth along with turbos on my back teeth.  Thanks to my horrible bite, he said I would just chew the brackets off my front teeth without them.  Since we decided to uncover my wisdom tooth, he ended up putting a button on that tooth and "anchoring" it to my first molar with another button so we wouldn't lose it.

Within the first day I managed to eat off the button on the back of my molar.  Other than that the first day wasn't bad.  Halfway through the second day the soreness set in.  The third day was much of the same.  Sore.  Living on tylenol and macaroni and cheese.  Milkshakes are my friend!  I can't understand how they can feel so good.  I also have learned a valuable lesson about eating rice...it really gets lost in my mouth.  Today is day 4 and it's status quo.  Sore teeth and trying to avoid real food.  The brackets are still an odd feeling.  They aren't really bothering my cheeks other than the waayyy back bottom brackets.  They are rubbing against my cheeks a little more than I'd like.  The turbos are making it a little hard to eat.  I can't really "bite down" all the way.  So I'm just kind of nomming on things til they get  mushy enough to eat.

Tomorrow is my first day back to work after getting these bad boys put on.  I'm not really excited.  I tried to forewarn people enough that hopefully it won't be a big topic of conversation..but you never know.  Something else I really miss is biting my nails!  I guess that's a good thing though.  I ordered my Waterpik off of Amazon yesterday (cheaper than in Target!) and I hope it feels amazing. 

I go back tomorrow to get the button put back on..or a loop..or something.  I go back for my new wire on May 10th and see how things are progressing.  I'm hoping to see a lot of progress between now and then. 

Day 1:

 



Intro

I went to the dentist at the beginning of January 2012 for my normal cleaning.  This was a new dentist because I felt my old dentist didn't really listen to my concerns.  I got an excellent cleaning and finally the dentist came in.  "You need braces"...

That was the moment that changed my entire attitude.  Not invisalign..but the real metal mouth braces.  She referred me to an orthodontist who did a consult, molds, and x-rays.  I was born without the lateral incisor on my left side.  And by having that gap my entire life, it allowed my molars to slowly shift forward leaving my bite half a tooth off.  Sure would have been nice to get this fixed when I was a teenager! 

Over the next few weeks we ran through a few options.  Move my molars up and shape my K9 into a lateral incisor.  Remove wisdom teeth, move molars back, get an implant.  Remove second molar and expose the wisdom tooth so it will eventually take the place of the molar (for the record, that molar had a cavity). 

We went with option 3.  I made an appointment with the oral surgeon and went under IV sedation for the procedure.  That was the first time going under for me so I was scared and nervous and cried on my way there.  The experience was painless.  I was told it lasted only about 20 minutes.  I decided to go ahead and get my other widsom tooth out while I was there (full bony impact..luckily only born with the two teeth on the top!).  Recovery wasn't too bad.  The hardest part was trying to talk.  I had a pretty decent scar from the wisdom removal.  The biggest pain was getting all of the food that was trapped in the extraction site out.  I got the procedure done on a Wednesday and returned back to work on Monday.  I should have waited until Tuesday because no one could understand what I was saying so it was a wasted effort. 

With the third approach, it will be an 18-20 month treatment.  The biggest issue is having to move my K9 on my left side since it decided to move into the lateral incisors place.  Essentially that tooth needs to move 1.5 teeth and it has a super long root.  There is a whole list of things that are "wrong" with my mouth.  Hopefully I will be able to keep up with this blog as the weeks go on.