I'll be an official Senior Citizen when my braces come off !

[Way Too Old For This]

I finally took the plunge at 52 1/2 to get my teeth fixed. I was braced in September 05 and had oral surgery to expose an impacted canine in October 05. I will have to have a frenectomy and one implant for a space where I never got a permanent tooth, (genetic). This adventure is supposed to take 2 1/2 years. I'm glad to have found this forum and don't feel so alone. I do however, still feel like the oldest one here.

I will try to post pictures of my progress. "Ruth" is the name I gave my impacted canine....Ruth the Roof Tooth. Does it look like she has moved since November?





Ruth's Progress:

[Kell]

Wow, look at that. What great progress!

[Way Too Old For This]

Thanks for the encouragement.

Sorry if the size of my photos does numbers to your screens. KK gave me some hints on how to fix, and I will try. (Not too sure if I can figure it out but will try). It wasn't too bad on my laptop because I have one of those wide screen ones.

[Way Too Old For This]

OOps, I guess I made them a little too small. I'll have to work on this from home. Tried to do it from work.

I'm not to bright with this stuff.

[Shawnie]

Great progress! Your smile looks so much wider now. Is Ruth your upper canine? I'm having both of my upper canines surgically exposed, but not sure when. I see that you only had to wait a month after having braces to have the surgery. I'm almost four months in and haven't had it done yet. My ortho said he wanted to get a strong archwire on before having the surgery. He said sometimes if it's not strong enough while pulling down on the canines it can pull the other teeth up. Anyway, your teeth look great.

[Way Too Old For This]

Whew....I think I got the pictures sized better now. That was a learning process! Its always good to learn something new. Thanks to KK for the private suggestions. I'm not very good at taking the pictures of my own mouth. I can't get the flash to work well inside my mouth Although they aren't 20 year old teeth, they aren't as stained as they appear in the photos.

My orthodontist wanted me to get the canine exposed as soon as possible so he could start yanking on it. I would have had the exposure sooner if the Oral Surgeon could have gotten me on his calendar. They tied it to my wire about 2 days after exposure. I think the position of the impacted tooth makes a big difference in the way they handle each case. Mine was either, move it or lose it. It was located where it would get in the way of moving the other teeth, so he was anxious to get it moving.

I have noticed my incisor has really come down, or gotten 'longer'?? since Ruth has been moving. I don't know if that is from tugging on Ruth or because she is out of the way .. Weird. I really didn't notice how much shorter those teeth were than the rest until they started coming down. I think I thought that the braces would just close the gaps....I am pleasantly surprised that there may be more improvements than just that. I guess my expectations weren't that high because I have hated my teeth for so long.

It is kind of funny now that I WANT to see pictures of my old smile to compare, I can't find that many because I avoided open mouth photos for so long!

[Shawnie]

Wow Way too old for this - It looks like Ruth is moving quite fast. From what I've read on these boards it can take awhile, but it looks like you're moving right along. Also doesn't look like Ruth was too high up in the pallet. I hope my canines will move as fast.

Just had to tell you that my daughter wanted to use the computer last night. She came in and saw I was on the Metal Mouth Message Board, which she always gives me a hard time about, being a teenager and all. She read your post and was cracking up. She said, she named her tooth!
Then she said, and you think some of my comments on the computer are crazy. Anyway, we got a good laugh. I think it's cleaver/funny that the tooth has a name.

I'll be watching your posts, as we are in the same situation. Keep up the good work Ruth.

Oh, I was wondering if you had the baby canine removed, or had it fallen out already? My two baby canines are still in place now.

[Way Too Old For This]

Shawnie. I had my baby canine still. The OS pulled it when he exposed Ruth. I also had a baby molar on the bottom up till a couple of years ago. He finally gave up the ghost, and now I will have to have an implant there.

I guess I am just a namer. I name everything, my car (Arnold, after the Govenator) my vacuum cleaner (Yogi, because he is always so hungry)... My whole family does this. Maybe we're weird, but we have fun. Its funny though how soon everyone else just knows what we are talking about when we call objects by their 'given' names.

When my brother was a little kid he named the gas meter that was outside the house. He called it the Nora Drake (an actress from the 40's...now THAT's weird, where did he come up with that). To this day everyone in my extended family calls the gas meter the Nora Drake.

You are right about Ruth not being too far up in my palate. She was toward the center of the palate, but just below the surface. In fact I've always had kind of a 'bump' on that side of the roof of my mouth. Its kind of surprising to me that she didn't erupt on her own. My Dad's did and he had that tooth in the roof of his mouth his whole life. (But he didn't name it....)