Metal Mouth Message Board

I think I have a high pain tolerance because even though my cheek was numb I did not think there were any problems. It's a quite numbing pain now and I looked at it carefully with a mirror and a flashlight and inside my left cheek its been ripped by the poking wire and very swollen! My back teeth are way back embedded into the gum so any wire poking on it will probably do some damage! I'm going to call my ortho tomorrow morning and hopefully they can fit me in because I won't have time to come in until next week mon or tues! Even if I put wax on it, the wax just moves and the end of the wire is exposed, I don't know how wax can be helpful when there is no room for it to "hang". Any suggestions?

Just ball a bit of wax up with your fingers, and then squish it onto anything sharp (i.e. the end of the wire). It makes the wire smooth, so it won't dig in.

My pain tolerance is good, apart from sharp brackets/wires

I havent had any sharp wires/brackets but I actually quite like when the teeth cause me a little pain - my thinking is that then I KNOW they are working

Haven't had any real bad pain that I couldn't cope with. I've took a few paracetmols on the odd days but thats about it.

I don't know if I'm the best person to speak on pain tolerance, because I'm only roughly two weeks in. However, my ortho told me that any time you have a long or poking wire and you can't get in for an appointment, you can always try to bend the wire down with the back of a spoon or a pencil eraser. I haven't tried this yet, but just figured I'd pass it along.

Hope this helps!