the last week of July I got them put on. Boy did it feel good to get those spacers out!!!
Here are a couple pics I took with a REALLY bad camera right before I went in and got the braces put on.. the hole from the tooth they pulled is still pretty ugly but oh well....
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j176/ ... 0232-1.jpg
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j176/ ... 0222-1.jpg
K here is the big long terrible experience of having braces so far.....
I went in and they popped out the spacers... I'd have to say that was the only good part of the appointment. The assistant immediately looked in my mouth and said "oh they should have put 2 spacers between each tooth. You don't have room"
After much shoving and cramming she MADE the back rings go around my bottom teeth... it literally felt like she was ripping a tooth out when she crammed them in against their will.
She gave me a short break after the bottom ones and said the top spaces were even smaller. It took her 1/2 hour to get the top right two rings on my two back teeth. She crammed and crammed and finally had to put them both on at the same time because if she put one in and then put the other in the first one would pop off. I had tears running down my face when she was done with that side and I'm no weanie when it comes to pain. Again, it felt like a tooth was being ripped out.
And then came the other side. This was the side the spacer fell out of the first day. She tried and tried and tried and could NOT get the back ring on. The orthodontist came in and HE tried to get it on. After putting a lot of muscle into it and my hearing what sounded like them scraping part of my tooth off he said they'd have to bond a hook to that tooth because there was no way it was gonna fit.
Not sure WHY but in order for them to bond that one dern tooth they had to remove the rings they had already got on my other teeth.
I'll save you the literally bloody details of him getting them back ON after he took them off.
From that point on the whole thing was easy as pie. They put the brackets on the rest of my teeth, put the wire on... it felt like it was tugging my teeth but didn't hurt.
The whole thing took just over 2 hours.
Right after that I went to work..... and soon left work because I could NOT get used to my lips sticking to the braces or the pain from my tongue catching on the hooks on my back teeth. I wanted to be miserable by myself.
It also felt weird trying to make my lips stretch over top the braces.
Here is a pic I took when I got home. Notice my lips are ripped from the devices they used to pry my lips open for 2 hours.... and you can see how my back teeth don't touch each other so eating was impossible at that point:
http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j176/ ... face-1.jpg
Day #2.... I quickly figured out there was NO way I could chew or mash anything. My back teeth didn't touch each other and my front teeth hurt so dang bad there was just no way.
So I figured I'd just have to drink my food. Well when you drink your tongue moves around and gets sliced on the hooks. I put wax on the hooks an they still hurt my tongue so bad I flinched every time I swallowed spit or anything. Drinking wasn't worth it.
So Day #3 and 4 I was quite weak and dizzy and figured out that with Ambesol spread over my tongue I could drink.
By day 6 I was so hungry I was actually sucking on my son's french fry at Dairy Queen when I realized that my back teeth were actually close enough that I could mash soft food. Yippeeeeee!!!!!!
Well, now it has been 2 weeks. My tongue is almost completely used to the hooks. I barely ever notice them. unless my mouth is incredibly dry, my brackets don't bother my lips at all and it feels natural having my lips go over them.
I can eat soft foods like stir fry with semi-crunchy vegetables but definatley NOT raw vegetables. I can eat chicken but steak is out of the question. Too hard.
The odd thing is that I'll go a couple days w/out any pain at all and then my lips will get annoyed with the brackets and my tongue will get sore and all my teeth hurt and it's like I'm back to square 1.
Then the pain goes away. And then a couple days later it's back again. Not sure if that's normal or not but it's annoying. I'm sure I should stop whining because I won't know real pain until I go in for an adjustment.
And that's my story so far... I have been smiling a lot more because my teeth are already straightening and I no longer feel bad about them being crooked because I'm doing something about it.
I like not hiding my teeth.
