New Here and Getting Braced!
Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:42 pm
Hi everyone, I'm so happy to have found these forums! I've been browsing for a few days and have found so much useful information. Let me introduce myself, I'm Verona, 27 years old, and have been thinking about getting braces for a long time. When I was a child, I got into a small accident and it caused my front teeth to tilt inwards. Everyone in my family has perfect teeth, except me, and I have always felt self-conscious about it. When I was younger, a dentist asked if I wanted braces but being young, afraid of pain (the thought of metal living in my mouth terrified me), and scared of being made fun of, I declined. Boy, I wish I had done it then. Years passed and I got used to hiding my teeth behind my hand and finding inventive ways to smile that didn't show so much of my teeth. I actually feel really sad when I think about all the times I wouldn't smile for photos or just in general when talking to people because of how my teeth looked. As time moved on and as I am nearing 30, I finally decided it was time to make a change and stop hiding myself. I have a good job - with a decent dental plan that will help pay for some of the ortho treatment - why not just do it? For a long time I didn't want to get braces because I didn't like the metal look and I just couldn't justify paying that much money just to straighten two teeth (my two front teeth are really the only teeth I have that are crooked!)
For the past couple months, I've been visiting general dentists, orthodontists, and cosmetic dentists. They all told me I wasn't a candidate for the invisible braces because my front teeth were too rotated. I was very bummed by this. For a time, I even considered not doing braces and just getting porcelain veneers done on my front teeth. That was until I got the estimate, $15-20 thousand!! (The cost for teeth whitening and getting the social six teeth veneered to look right together) I also didn't like hearing they'd have to shave off quite a bit of enamel and that it could damage nerves, resulting in root canals. I have pretty healthy teeth overall and don't feel comfortable with getting this amount of work done on them. Comestic dentistry quickly went out the window.
So here I am...back to braces again. The ortho that I am seeing says I have a slight crossbite and that he can straighten my front teeth along with correcting the crossbite in 15-18 months. I am opting for ceramic brackets since I work in a corporate environment and am meetings quite a bit. I am a little nervous about all of this because after doing a lot of reading here, he hasn't given me a lot of information besides this. I asked a lot of common questions, but didn't know about asking more detailed questions about brackets/ligatures/archwires/etc. I also saw a lot of people here are saying you should always get things in writing. I am planning on e-mailing him and asking him about all of this and asking him to provide me something in writing before I go in for the banding session (which is supposed to happen in two weeks!).
Also he never told me about what types he was going to use. I have so many questions for him that I need to type up a page long e-mail! I don't think he uses Damon or Inovation or those types. I think he uses just the traditional ones. What do you think of traditional vs. Damon/Inovation/etc? Have any of you ever been in my situation where you really old had problems with a few teeth? My other concern is that since my front teeth have been crooked for so long, I've sanded the bottoms of them down. Once my teeth become straight, I can already tell that they will have weird round edges instead of lining up next to eachother nicely. That is what led me to looking into veneers in the beginning. I just don't want to go through getting braces, have straight teeth, and then having to get some veneer-type work just to get them to look right. Please let me know if any of you have gone through anything similar to this.
This is such a great support group and I'm so glad to be here. I look forward to sharing my experience here with you once it happens
For the past couple months, I've been visiting general dentists, orthodontists, and cosmetic dentists. They all told me I wasn't a candidate for the invisible braces because my front teeth were too rotated. I was very bummed by this. For a time, I even considered not doing braces and just getting porcelain veneers done on my front teeth. That was until I got the estimate, $15-20 thousand!! (The cost for teeth whitening and getting the social six teeth veneered to look right together) I also didn't like hearing they'd have to shave off quite a bit of enamel and that it could damage nerves, resulting in root canals. I have pretty healthy teeth overall and don't feel comfortable with getting this amount of work done on them. Comestic dentistry quickly went out the window.
So here I am...back to braces again. The ortho that I am seeing says I have a slight crossbite and that he can straighten my front teeth along with correcting the crossbite in 15-18 months. I am opting for ceramic brackets since I work in a corporate environment and am meetings quite a bit. I am a little nervous about all of this because after doing a lot of reading here, he hasn't given me a lot of information besides this. I asked a lot of common questions, but didn't know about asking more detailed questions about brackets/ligatures/archwires/etc. I also saw a lot of people here are saying you should always get things in writing. I am planning on e-mailing him and asking him about all of this and asking him to provide me something in writing before I go in for the banding session (which is supposed to happen in two weeks!).
Also he never told me about what types he was going to use. I have so many questions for him that I need to type up a page long e-mail! I don't think he uses Damon or Inovation or those types. I think he uses just the traditional ones. What do you think of traditional vs. Damon/Inovation/etc? Have any of you ever been in my situation where you really old had problems with a few teeth? My other concern is that since my front teeth have been crooked for so long, I've sanded the bottoms of them down. Once my teeth become straight, I can already tell that they will have weird round edges instead of lining up next to eachother nicely. That is what led me to looking into veneers in the beginning. I just don't want to go through getting braces, have straight teeth, and then having to get some veneer-type work just to get them to look right. Please let me know if any of you have gone through anything similar to this.
This is such a great support group and I'm so glad to be here. I look forward to sharing my experience here with you once it happens