Nimo's leg of the trip.

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#16 Post by **nimo** » Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:29 am

It's early morning of day three, and I'm afraid I'm doing something wrong. Not because of how much pain I'm in, but because of how much pain I'm not in. Yesterday my jaw was a little sore, and so was my throat, and so I kept myself medicated for fear that if I didn't it would feel really bad. The result was I slept a lot (which is fine with me), and that jaw and throat pain was the only pain I felt throughout the day. I woke up this morning with the same type of jaw pain (throat pain isn't there)...and really if I hadn't gotten teeth pulled I would just think my jaw was sore from chewing gum or eating beef jerky. It's that mild.

So I'm going to take an Ibuprofen when I'm done with my yogurt, and then I'm going to brush my teeth (CAREFULLY...brushing my teeth kind of wigs me out right now). And I'm going to continue being paranoid.

#17 Post by **nimo** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:23 am

After almost five days I'm eating solid foods (tortellini tonight, and some macaroni salad). My jaw feels a little tight, still, so I'm still taking the Ibuprofen, which seems to be helping. And that's it. It's been amazingly uneventful.

I was afraid the premolar gaps would be really obvious, which they are if I smile really huge. Talking is bizarre, too. I have a lisp, and of course I'm drooling like a toddler, so that doesn't help. It doesn't help that my bite is WAY off. There's no comfortable way to put all my teeth together top and bottom. It's funny because I had a lisp when I was younger, and now I'm reverting back to the way I talked when I was 7 before they stuck me in speech therapy. It's either that or I start slaughtering "s" and "sh" sounds.

#18 Post by **nimo** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:50 am

I drooled in my sleep prior to braces, it's just gotten more...prolific since I had my teeth pulled. ew

I was actually dreading this extraction thing more than anything else I'll have to go through (including jaw surgery) because I'd heard so many horror stories about people getting their teeth pulled. It definitely helped having the whole week off, but I never had swelling or a ton of pain. Just...holes.

But now I'm looking at people who have had canine exposure and dreading that too. Great! I can feel the tip of the tooth behind my lateral (I've been able to feel the bottom of it since my senior year of high school, but it might have been there beforehand), and I'm hoping that means something good. My wisdom teeth were all exposed and I had no problems...maybe the tiny exposed part of this tooth will mean no problems too? :::crosses fingers:::

I did have a moment of "THIS IS ALL TOTALLY WORTH IT" when I looked in the bathroom mirror the other day and saw my crossbite. It's still straggling around behind my other teeth, but it's closer, and you can see more of it since the top teeth now have all kids of room to move. There is no room for my to stick my tongue between my crossbite teeth, whereas I used to be able to get it all the way up to the gums. I'm also really happy to have those teeth out of the way because it makes flossing that much easier.

I like to try to predict what will happen next at the ortho office. Powerchains for the side the impacted tooth isn't on? Maybe they'll tell me to set up a date for that exposure. I have a thousand little hooky-thingies on my brackets, so I'm wondering when I'll start wearing elastics. And they tried to put molar bands on my last molars, but there wasn't enough room, so I'm thinking the dreaded spacers will come back. :::whimper:::

#19 Post by **nimo** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:13 pm

Here are some pictures. Hopefully they won't be gigantic.
This is the first day:

And this is March 16 (today):

Not tons of change, but a little. I don't remember if my mouth is closed all the way in the first picture, but it definitely is in the first. That's as far as everything goes, and even that's not a comfortable resting position for my mouth. And I just now noticed what my husband was trying to point out the other day: that tooth on the far right on the bottom has come up quite a bit, as you can tell by how much straighter the wire is. Craziness! My bottom teeth on that side have scrunched together a lot more (I predict some springs on that side in my near-ish future).

#20 Post by **Leslie022** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:38 pm

I was wondering when you were going to post pictures! It's nice to finally see what you're talking about! Nice progress!

#21 Post by **nimo** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:15 am

Today was my first adjustment. New copper wire (which has a chip right in the middle on top where it's the most noticeable, Grrrr), new pink and silver ligs. I don't know where my original pics went (I guess I deleted them accidentally) so here they are again.
Day one:

And April 11:

On the bottom left he put wire ties instead of regular ligs which was AMAZINGLY painful!!! I was totally not prepared for that! But aside from the pain of getting pushed and pulled to get the ligs on, and a little twinge-y feeling in my bottom front teeth afterwards, everything's been fine. Since there are silver ligs on the bottom the fact that two rubber ligs are missing isn't noticeable.
It's all been fairly uneventful. No broken brackets, no crazy amount of pain. i have been clenching my jaw at night, and grinding my teeth, which wakes me up a lot. I've had the occasional sore spot, but nothing patience and time didn't take care of. Really it hasn't been as bad as I was afraid it would be.

#22 Post by **nimo** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:25 pm

At this point I'm worried about...well, everything. Things are going well, better than I thought. But I keep reading about peoples' impacted canines not coming down. I'm supposed to have surgery in about a year. I'm assuming if the canine isn't down by then, surgery will be a no-go. I'd be sort of okay with waiting ("sort of" because waiting is just not fun in general), except I'm trying to plan a big wedding. We already put the date back once (I wanted to wait so we could save up money). I'm afraid that if we put the date back again people will think it's not happening. But it's a valid excuse, surgery and all. I don't know. I should talk to my husband about it. Or see if the ortho can give me a plan of action. I realize that if things don't want to move, then there's nothing I can do but wait, and I also want the ortho to know that I'm not going to push something or be uncooperative simply because my mouth wants to be uncooperative.

Anyway...day after first adjustment is fine. My bottom molars were a little achy when I woke up, but that went away fairly quick, and it's back to the bottom front teeth hurting, which is no surprise. Canned corned beef with relish on top and uber boiled brocolli for dinner, which is officially up there on my happy squishy foods list. (Steamed veggies may be better, but smooshy brocolli makes me sooooo happy.) The husband is doing the no carb diet thing, so now both of our diets are limited, but his is more limited than mine. For a while what we ate depended on me, but now we go back and forth more on the what-do-you-want-it's-up-to-you-what-do-you-want seesaw when it comes time for dinner.

Something that is still taking some getting used to is the new bite. My front teeth right side crossbite is making the slow migration to the correct side (which is unbelievably exciting!!!), and while I'm not chomping down on it like I feared, i still keep hitting it a little when I chew, so I have to be careful.

Oh, and I'm definitely happy about the new wire. My old wire's kinkiness straightened out by the time my first adjustment came around, and I was wondering if new ligs would put new kinks in it, or if my progress would slow down severely with the old wire. The new wire is a copper 18. I believe the old wire was a 16.

#23 Post by **nimo** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:24 pm

My impacted canine is still impacted. Right now what you see up front are my left lateral, my two central front teeth, my right lateral (which is the soon-to-be-former crossbite), and my right canine. The ortho said we would talk about getting the impacted canine down in my next appointment. Right now it's still way up there behind my left lateral.

But yes, progress is going well, and I won't know what's going to happen until it actually happens, so no point in worrying now (not that I'm going to stop worrying

) . While I would love to be braces-free in my wedding, I'm not willing to suffer the setbacks removing my braces might cause. Plus, I'm pretty sure the ortho wouldn't do it. It's a military clinic, and every dentist, dental assistant, and even receptionist I've seen has told me that I'm lucky the ortho would see me, since they deal exclusively with severe cases that require jaw surgery. I just think I'm lucky because this is all magnificiently *free*.

I haven't told any of my family about my braces because I'm not very close to most people in my family. I don't know what my parents' reaction will be. They'll probably see me this September, and I'm optimistically figuring that by then the only thing that won't appear straight in my smile is that impacted canine (since it probably won't be in the picture, yet). Going from my crooked grin to the way it is now has made my husband say, "WOW!" a few times when he's walked in and seen me sneering at the mirror to check my progress. But I don't know if my parents will even acknowledge my progress, or if they'll just be embarassed about how much I care about my appearance...and that, to put it bluntly, kind of hurts my feelings. So I'm avoiding the confrontation for now.

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. Sometimes it just helps to get things typed out on the screen.

#24 Post by **nimo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:14 am

I wanted to do a comparison on my bottom teeth, since the crowding down there got worse with braces (which wasn't that big a deal, it was just something I noticed), and they put wire ties on two of my bottom teeth to speed things along.

So here's a week ago, the day they put the wire ties on:

And here's today, a week later. I don't know why my teeth are more yellow here, maybe lack of natural light:

As you can see, the archwire has started to straighten some, and the tooth against the canine on the right side in the pictures has moved back. The tooth in the middle with the lig against the one with the wire tie is my biggest obstacle in flossing. Well, it's not even an obstacle, more like an immobile force. I can't get ANYTHING down there. So I'm happy to see movement there, too.

I would also like to say that I unoficially have straight teeth that are not canines or molars. Yes, there are tiny gaps closing, new gaps opening, and my bottom right teeth (left in the pictures) feel almost totally in-line for the first time EVER. HOORAY!

My molars on my right side are a little sore, but that might be from some vigorous flossing. The left side is always sore, and I never eat anything harder than a muffin on that side. My top right canine started to hurt yesterday, which made me happy. That's where my major (to me) crossbite is, and I want that sucker to move, move, move!

#25 Post by **nimo** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:14 pm

I feel like this is never going to get right, and I'm only in the third month.

I keep looking at pictures, and how the archwire is curved like a roller coaster track, and at this point I cannot imagine having actually straight teeth.

But I caught a flash of me smiling in the mirror today, and was surprised at how much better my teeth look from far away. So that's good.

#26 Post by **nimo** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 1:50 pm

All right, I had my second adjustment today. Here's the pic I took afterwards:

There's a thicker wire top and bottom. Also the nifty little kinks in the wire on top and bottom. He put wire ties on two of my bottom teeth again (not as painful as last time, probably because those teeth have moved a pretty significant amount). And you can't see, but they bracketed my back molars. He was only going to do the bottom since my jaw was getting really tired from the whole process, but I gave the go-ahead for the top too, which wasn't nearly as bad. I'm kind of excited about those, because my back molars have always been way off the line with my other teeth, so when they move it'll be really noticeable. And being able to notice any movement is a good thing.

So, again, no massive amounts of pain, no broken brakcets, just movin' teeth. They're still holding off on my canine exposure, which actually works out right now because I have a lot of stuff coming up this summer. I'm going to NYC in less than three weeks (I'M SO STOKED ABOUT THIS!!!), we're moving to a new house (ugh, I don't like moving), and I have a six week class starting next month. So not having to make any extra appointments is fine with me right now.

#27 Post by **nimo** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:07 am

This adjustment has ended up being more painful than the last. I woke up after a nap with my whole bottom jaw and my top molars aching. I took an ibuprofen, which helped a lot. But eating was basically impossible. We got Chinese food, and I couldn't eat anything but the rice...which was still too hard for me to chew. Ugh.

I plan on enjoying NYC very much. It's my second time going, and I have about a week to just chill and do whatever I want. I think this time will be a lot more enjoyable (which isn't to say I didn't have any fun the last time I went...I loved it). I have more time, I've already done the major stuff I wanted so I can focus on doing new things, and it won't be December, so maybe I can hang out outside without freezing.

#28 Post by **nimo** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:33 pm

My wires are flat rather than round. Is this what they mean by a square wire?

I don't know if anyone will reply to this, but I didn't want to make a whole new thread for a simple question.

#29 Post by **Leslie022** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 8:22 pm

As far as I know it is...

#30 Post by **nimo** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:12 pm

My molars are almost done being sore (I was almost worried they would keep being sore while I was on vacation next week

). Flossing is a lot harder with my very back teeth bracketed. The inside of my lip got scratched at my last adjustment, which turned into an all-out sore spot. It was almost getting better (mmmm, salt soaks), but last night it got cut while I was flossing (OW), so now it's a bigger sore spot, and still very much there.

My bottom front teeth were clicking around last night. I keep feeling around the edges of them with my tongue, hoping that when I wake up in the morning they'll be *that* much more even.

I didn't really have any change in the spaces between my molars until this adjustment. Some are really easy to floss between, and others are a little harder. I'm eager to see what kind of movement will go on in the next couple weeks.