Kristy's Story!!

[Kristyar0]

So yesterday was my 2 month brace-versary. I'm so happy with the progress so far! So to mark my 2 months i thought i'd put up a photo update:


day 1


1 month


2 months

my uneven gumline is even getting a bit better! The worst part is that i now have the dreaded 'black trianges', particularly between my 2 front teeth.

[plugnickel69]

Your teeth look great. It's amazing how much movement there can be in such a short time.

Do you know what kind of brackets you have?

[Kristyar0]

hey plugnickel69,
thanks so much!
my brackets are damon clears on the front social 6 and damon 3s everwhere else..

[petal]

your smile reminds me of a dear friends smile! Her teeth look so great after her brace experience. I hope yours turn out just as lovely!!

[sjs8906]

Your smile is looking great! Also, your clear brackets look so nice... . I will be getting Damon Clear on my social 6 as well and hope mine look as great as yours!

[Kristyar0]

thanks so much for your comments petal and sjs8906! it's so nice to have support with this whole braces thing! it's less than a month until i get my suresmile scan, so that will be another exciting milestone!

[Kristyar0]

petal, do you have a story i can follow? i'd love to have a look seeing as we've been in our braces for almost exactly the same amount of time!
it is less than one week until my suresmile scan, i cant wait as i feel that my teeth are at a bit of a standstill..

[Kristyar0]

So Thursday (10/2) was my Suresmile scan! I had an orthodontist appointment at 11:30am. The first good thing was that the ortho's assistant told me that i'm doing a fantastic job cleaning my teeth and that she couldn't see any plaque anywhere! i was so glad to hear that seeing as i have slacked off a fair bit with my routine compared to when i started. I used to brush after every meal and floss morning and night. Now i just brush morning and night and floss probably once or twice a week. but i do use a waterpik twice daily and if i'm at home i use it right after eating any meals.
So the first thing the assistant did was take my wires out. then she took off those blue things that stop me from biting down on my brackets. that felt pretty horrible because she had to snap them off then scrape off all the excess. it didn't hurt but it sounded horrible!
Then she took a whole new set of photos to compare to the ones i had taken at my initial consultation. i am going to try and get my hands on these to upload and so i can compare how the arches look because that is something i haven't photographed myself. After the photos were taken i had my suresmile scan done. it was quite cool! firstly i had to have those horrible retractors put in to keep my mouth open. i hate those! then she painted my teeth with this white stuff. it tasted a lot like listerine except that i couldn't spit it out! so it kind of felt like my mouth was burning! then she waved a wand around in my mouth which picks up the white surface and draws a 3D picture on the screen. she did all of the surfaces of my teeth and then me biting together. she then gave me a bit of a tour around my teeth!
so then i had to go to the xray clinic aound the corner and have an xray of my mouth taken while my wires and everything were out. Then i had to head back to the ortho to get my wires and bite turbos back in. On my second visit i had my actual ortho doing the work. he is so weird and quirky with the things he says that i really enjoy it when i see him. except that when he was pushing my wires back in with a pair of pliers he slipped and took a gouge out of the inside of my lower lip. it is sooo painful. whenever i eat it hurts because salt or sauce gets in there and it stings! and it is always rubbing on my metal lower brackets so hurts when i talk and chew! anyway i'm sure it'll go away soon. and he did feel pretty bad about it and it was just an accident. it's funny how one little thing hurting me now bugs me, when for the first week after getting braces, everything hurt!
So i am going back in 8 weeks (8th April) to get my first set of suresmile wires (magic wires as my ortho calls them) put in. Can't wait! except that for the next 8 weeks i know that i'll have no progress as i still have the same wires in!

[Snowglobe32]

Hi Kristy,

I have had my SureSmile wires in for about two weeks now. I have had braces for over 16 months and didn't want to pay the extra for SS. I wish I had done it from the beginning!

I am curious as to why you are months into treatment and haven't gotten your wires yet?

[Kristyar0]

hi snowglobe,
my ortho doesn't do suresmile from the start. he just uses the round archwires for tooth leveling then uses suresmile for all the the exact placements.
i'm not sure what other orthos do but on the suresmile website under the doctors section it says:

'Use the bracket of your choice to bond the patient as you normally would and use a straight-wire for leveling.You will scan the patient three to six months after bonding.'

so i'm thinking he just does the standard thing. but i have heard of orthos using suresmile from the start. maybe on patients whose teeth dont need leveling? i'm not really sure. but as you can see from my pics my teeth definately needed leveling!

[petal]

I just finally saw your post asking if I had a story to follow. I do, it is titled, "starting braces at 40". I have not quite figured out how to post pics, but I have had such amazing changes in my smile. I hope your journey is going well!

[wiredmouth]

Kristy! Your braces look wonderful! Looking forward to watching the progression!

Keep smiling proudly,

S

[LittleSuzie]

Hi Kristy!

I was so excited to see your story on here because it seems we're from the same city.. I have been browsing stories for a while now and most were from overseas! (I actually joined so I could post ).

Your teeth and braces look amazing! I'm in the process of shopping for an ortho.. It's such a scary step. Can I ask how much roughly yours set you back? (I know every case is different but to see an AUD ballpark gives me more of an idea than ortho sites, and overseas pricing).

Keep posting updates, I see you haven't for a while now and I'm hoping you do because it's interesting to see your progress.. and it's giving me more courage to make the step haha.

Good luck with the metal

[Kristyar0]

hey!
so i haven't posted in ages, it's funny how braces just become part of you and you don't think about them anymore. i think because of that i didn't even think of posting. well my braces saga has turned into a drama, but i'll update on that after i do some picture updates. i FINALLY got given a login to my ortho's website so have some initial photos and some taken on the day of my suresmile scan (3 months in braces). so here we go:

initial front view:


initial top arch:


initial bottom arch:


3 month front view:


3 month top arch:


3 month bottom arch:


so now i am at the 8 month mark. i'm onto my 4th suresmile wire. the movements that it's making are a bit hard to appreciate as they're just minor. however i wore a powerchain on the bottom teeth for 8 weeks and now there are no gaps like there were in the suresmile photos. my top teeth are looking really good too! my right hand lateral incisor and canine tooth are sitting a couple of mm's higher than the ones on the left so currently the wire i have is working on bringing them down a bit so all of the teeth are completely even.
but wait, there's more: when i was at the ortho about 2 months ago he asked me to bite together and when i did so said, "you're having jaw surgery aren't you" to which i naturally replied "no" as that was the first time it had been mentioned and it certainly wasn't part of my treatment plan. So my ortho said "well i think you need it now, so go see this surgeon. you have a malocclusion. We could fix it with elastics, but you'll be wearing braces forever. if you get surgery they'll be off in a few months", wrote me a referral note and left the room before i could get any words out. i was in shock!
So anyway off i went to visit this surgeon. he explained that because my top teeth were straightened out now, the arch is larger and further forward than the bottom one. so when i bite together they stick out about 5mm more than the bottoms.
i think you can kind of get the idea when you look at the side photos from my initial consult and then from 3 months:

initial:

you can see my teeth are point to point rather than point to gap. the ortho's plan was to straighten out the top arch and then use elastics and TADs to bring the teeth all back a bit so that they lined up correctly.

3 months:

you can see that i have a serious overbite now, and one that will apparently take 'forever' to fix with my initial treatment plan. the jaw surgery will see the bottom jaw pushed forward a couple of mms so that my teeth line up correctly.

so as i need my wisdom teeth out anyway i have decided to get the surgery all done at once so that i only have to pay for one hospital stay, one surgeon's fee and one anaesthetist's fee. the surgeon quoted me about $4500 but i'm not sure if that is just his fee or if that is the approximate total cost (fingers crossed it's the total!). I'm not sure how much i'll get back from my health insurance but hopefully something!

So to answer your question LittleSuzie my total cost is now $8300 for braces ($6800 for basic braces + $1000 for suresmile + $500 for ceramic uppers) + whatever the surgery ends up costing. it is a lot. and i was pretty upset when i found out i needed surgery due to the extra cost. but at the same time i will have my braces off after just over a year! and i did pick an expensive ortho to start with, so that was also my own decision (he came highly recommended and has done some great work on people i know)

so there is my update! sorry it has been so long!

[Kristyar0]

sorry the photos are ENORMOUS !