Metal Mouth Message Board

Well, a bit of metal, a wire behind the bottom teeth, and then there's the plastic retainer at night on top.

Honestly, the worst part was the first day or two (THE PAIN, THE PAIN) and then the scraping (two different occasions as uppers were removed earlier than bottoms) to get the brackets off.

The (one) tooth extraction was actually one of the easiest parts!

KK wrote:Great news slywy ... bet you're excited to have naked teeth again ... and good looking teeth! Any pics?

Good luck with having a great smile and bite for the rest of your life!

The bottom edge of one front tooth seems to have been sheared off at one point, which straightening made more obvious, so I have to talk to the dentist about that. My one front tooth was advancing, pushing the other back, my bottom teeth were going sideways (every other one, somewhat making triangles), and the orthodontist also decided to work on the open bite and overbite. The open bite is still bothering him because I have two upper wisdom teeth that have gone awry and are preventing my teeth from quite meeting.

I think a lot of the skewing of teeth was aging/bone loss and started in the last few years.

Photo (it's scary): http://www.slywy.com/photos/nometal.jpg

Congrats, slywy!! Your smile is looking fabulous!

KK wrote:Looking really good slywy! You've got good reason to smile!

Now that your teeth are naked can your ortho still do something about your open bite? Hope it all works out for the best! Take care!

Thanks!

He wanted to extract the offending wisdom teeth but the grimace and groan I gave out probably made him think of an alternative -- grinding them down. That's supposed to be in a few months. I don't know about it. I haven't decided . . .

johnnys_angel wrote:Congrats, slywy!! Your smile is looking fabulous!

Thank you!