Erika's Story...

[lovesupreme08]

My name is Erika, I am 27 years old and this is my story in a nutshell. When I was a teenager, I noticed that my front two teeth began to loosen and rotate, so one day I made an appointment at the University of Tennessee dental clinic, you know where they have graduate students work on your teeth...anyway it was there that I was diagnosed with juvenile periodontitis that affected all four back molars and two front teeth.

When I was graduating from high school and on my way to college, family members on my inactive father's side said as a graduation gift they would get me braces!!! I thought YES! Finally a smile I could be proud of...so we go to the ortho, I tell him I have the gum disease and he says thoses issues need to be taken care of before we can start treatment...cool. He recommends a periodontist...Judith Schmidt, who was awesome, after the consultation she tells me I have lost so much bone in tooth #7 it needs to be removed and tooth #17 needs a root canal...I opted, foolishly to have them both removed. I recieved a flipper for the front tooth so I wouldn't have a gap..I did all of this with the expectation that in 6 months during my holiday break, I would start ortho treatment...when I returned home I learned my family members on the dad's side didn't pay the perio bill and therefore I couldn't continue with my work...

The next 10 years would just be a struggle to maintain the health of my teeth and gums until Ocotber 2006 when I had my consult with my current ortho...he told me I would need to stablize the health of my gums, get my wisdom teeth outh before I started treatment...it took me 11 months to do all of that but I got braces on Tuesday, September 18, 2007! I have ceramic on top and metal on the bottom..they actually put on the braces and put in spacers in the top molars the same day. To be honest the spacers haven't bothered me soo much because the wire for my flipper has been around those teeth for 10 years now.

In two weeks I am getting a mini implant in my lower left jaw area with the goal of pulling that 3rd molar on the left forward far enough to have a bridge for the two missing molars on that side. I am still adjusting to the braces, the past two days I wake up and my top lip is swollen, the hooks cut the inside of my bottom lip and my teeth feel strange! But all in all I am thankful I was finally able to get this done! I am supposed to be in treatment for 18months, but we will see what happens. The ortho says they could be a slight possibility that tooth #8 has fused to the bone and won't move, but we won't know until we try cause you can't tell that on xrays..so I am hopeful! I will keep you posted.

[lovesupreme08]

Guess my story gets no love.

[Danielle]

I'm glad you're finally on your way! I've had some perio issues in the past too (because of severe crowding). In fact every couple of months I still get a deep cleaning just to keep everything in check and leave no room for any gum issues to pop up. Good luck!