Deville's Journey...First adjustment!

[deville]

At my last adjustment, my ortho upped my wire strength and told me that I had approx. 9 more wires to work through before I was finished in total, and 3-4 more wires before he started closing my gaps (hopefully this means I'm on track for my 2 yr diagnosis). He capped it off by saying that if they kept moving well, I'd get a new wire again next time.

Naturally I've spent the last few weeks hoping with everything I have that I would get a new wire this time! The apex of this being that I showed up at this appointment terribly nervous, because I desperately wanted to move to a new wire and lo and behold, while I didn't get a new one on the bottom, I did get a new one on top.

This time there was no discomfort at all when he changed my ligs and not even any tightness with the new wire (I love the tight feeling, it makes it feel like stuff is really going on). However for within 2 hrs a couple of my lower teeth started screaming with pain. Caveat: the pain doesn't bother me at all, I take it as a good sign! So, as this was the only real pain that I've felt since the spacers I had a quick check in the mirror to make sure it all looked OK, and I couldn't believe it when I saw that in that 2 hrs one of my more stubborn wayward teeth which was quite out of line had moved into place almost perfectly! So the pain was worth it

Photo updates:

Normal Smile:


Upper Arch:


Lower Arch:


Comparisons:

[opera^gal]

Terrific progress!

Quick question: was it painful to have your fillings changed over? It's something I'm considering when this is all said and done.

[deville]

Terrific progress!

Quick question: was it painful to have your fillings changed over? It's something I'm considering when this is all said and done.

Hi there! Thank you - I'm pretty excited about how they're looking and how quickly time is going

Don't worry, there's absolutely no pain at all having the fillings changed, it's exactly like like any other filling as they just remove the amalgam with the drill (like they would on decay) and then fill it.

I would recommend it completely - after I had the first couple done I stared in the mirror for days with my mouth open admiring the new look! Plus I really believe there are health benefits to it. Good luck!

[SharMarali]

Hi deville! I am soooo jealous of your progress. Your teeth are looking SO great already! I got braced about a month before you did and I absolutely can't WAIT for my teeth to look as fabulous as yours do already.

Great job on keeping your clear ligs unstained! I, unfortunately, started smoking again recently (I had quit for six months) and NOTHING goes unstained because of it. I need to quit again, I know. Be a shame to go through all the effort of having my teeth straightened and then have them all yellow from smoking.

[brika]

Your smile looks so lovely, deville!
I hear you on feeling good about painful teeth. It's the price of progress! Hopefully it won't be TOO uncomfortable for you, though!
Congratulations on all your movement! I hope the rest of your treatment time flies by!

[deville]

First up, thanks everyone for your lovely comments! I've been keeping my blog updated with progress, but until lately I hadn't noticed many more changes, so haven't been updating here... so here's a quick catch up since adjustment 3:

Adjustment 4





Adjustment 5





And now for the latest, adjustment 6! First of all, I can't believe it's already my 6th adjustment and how much my teeth have changed in the last few months. In the last couple of weeks I've been finding it increasingly hard to brush between the extraction gaps and thought that it was just me... Suddenly a couple of days ago I realised that in fact the upper gaps had closed an amazing amount, by about half in only a couple of weeks!

Something else new is my power chain on the bottom, which I was surprised to get so soon as the ortho said he wouldn't start closing the gaps for a while yet. I have to say it's painful, but not anywhere near as much as I thought, so that's fine by me! I woke up a few times last night after clashing my teeth together in my sleep, but then I did that right back in the beginning too, and I'm finding it a bit difficult to eat because my molars ache when I do, but it's only just over 24 hours and already the ache is going (except for when I eat, but that's only 3 times a day)!

In other news, the ortho told me that my bite has taken on a slant on top which could be quite difficult to fix. I'm not sure what this means for me yet, but he did say there was a possibility that it would correct itself. He's decided that until the top and bottom gaps are aligned he's only going to move the bottom teeth, so I expect that's why I got the powerchain earlier than expected.

So here are my current progress pics:

[techiegirl74]

Just read your story from the beginning - we have similar stories including the fears of dentists. I had a tooth pulled when i was about 12 that was abcessed and although I was crying and telling him I felt everything he yanked it anyway (instead of giving me a course of antibiotics first). I got very lucky with my current dentists though. They spoil me like no other!

Its awesome to see how much improvement you have had so far and rally has me super motivated! Congratulations on things thus far!

[deville]

Thanks techiegirl74!

I haven't bothered to take photos over the last few months, because frankly, I've been really disappointed with the changes and didn't want to keep a record of the 'down parts'.

To catch you up quickly, the power chain on the bottom continued for a couple of months with nothing being done to the top other than ligature changes on the front 4 teeth... Then at adjustment 8, he removed the power chain and just did a lig change top and bottom. This was a bit of a kick in the teeth (excuse the pun!) as just a few days before, I saw a photo my mum had taken of me that weekend... I was smiling large for the camera, thinking "wow my teeth are going to look so nice!" and boom, back down to earth when I got the photo up on my laptop (excited about seeing my teeth) and saw that the gaps that had opened up on top were much larger than I thought (rice holders!) and some nasty looking tilting and rotation was happening that I hadn't noticed before. To cap everything off my worst fears were realised when he removed the power chain and the gaps opened again within 3 days, so really, for the last 4 months I've felt like I've made not one little bit of progress and have just been avoiding having anything other than a basic relationship with my teeth.

But anyway, I knew there'd come a time when it got worse before it got better, and horrible photo aside, I know I'm much better off than I was 10 months ago, but comparing my photos, I really can't see any change in the last 4 months, so it doesn't make me feel that much better right now.

I hoped so much that he would start work on the top again (and that the power chain would go back on the bottom), and had even packed a soft lunch as an 'omen', so I was super excited when I saw him cut two lengths of chain! The powerchain on top is actually so much better looking than I thought it would be, I find it's less noticable than ligatures actually, as it also slightly camouflages the archwire. It's only on my 6 front teeth, so is not there to close the extraction gaps, but my concern was the gaps and movement between my anterior teeth so I'm more than happy. I actually grinned like and idiot the whole way back to work!

These photos don't show everything, but I was in so much pain from the chains that I couldn't really get my mouth open and shut like normal so these are the best I could get. 2 days later I'm still in pain (this has probably been the worst since the spacers), but I'm just so glad to have the chain on both, I really don't care at all, it's just something that's there and I'm glad for it because I can already see the changes! My friend at work called me mad for being happy about being in pain... It's hard to explain that it's become an indication of how well my teeth are moving so I kind of welcome it, because it means changes are happening.

It's exciting to think that my braces have been on for just under a year and that (fingers crossed!) I'm nearly half way through.

[alibracket]

Hang in there! I have noticed a huge difference. And though i cant offer much in advice( i have yet to have my first adjustment) I think there has been a lot of progress just by looknig at the pictures. Thanks for sharing your experience, I find it helpful on my own journey!

[deville]

OK, so it's been a really long time since I posted. It's not that the time's gone quickly, it's that over the last few months I've grown to dislike my smile almost more than I did before I started treatment and have been deliberately trying to forget I'm on this journey.

At the beginning of the year, my ortho stopped part way through replacing the ligs on the top arch (I mean he really did put 4 of them on) then said out of the blue, "that black triangle is bugging me", pulled hard on the archwire and started to do IPR. This happened all in the space of a minute and I was so shocked I just didn't say anything, all the time running through my mind was how could he do this well with the archwire in place and that I hoped he doesn't ruin the look of my front teeth as he didn't seem to be thinking too much about what he was doing.

I checked my teeth in my rear view mirror as soon as I got in the car and immediately saw white scratches on my tooth, and that he had reshaped only one tooth, not a bit off each like I thought he would, and they now looked totally wrong. It's hard to explain, but one of the teeth was ever so slightly more triangular than the other before, and the tooth he shaved was the more rectangular one, making something barely noticecable that I didn't mind, VERY noticeable. I figured that he'd fix it over time, and I have tried to get over that disappointment, and assure myself he'd even things out eventually.

The next month, the ortho mentioned that I was doing so well, he thought I might be able to get my braces off as early as July. I was excited as I thought, I'd finally be getting my last molar bands, and the rest of the IPR he'd talked about me needing, and would fix those front teeth. That month he replaced my wire and I was quite excited.

Except, since then the new wire caused my teeth to come completely out of alignment, opened up 4 new gaps in the top and caused my rear molars to come even more misaligned with my arch than they were before. Since that adjustment in feb he's made no adjustments other than adding a powerchain to close the gaps this month, and only then after a visiting ortho mentioned how big they were (he had the ligs out and ready to put on before he swapped over).

Here's where I've lost faith completely; in the last month since the chain was put on, my teeth have taken on a slant and my midline on top is now at an angle, which I'm sure is because of that IPR'd tooth. As well as this, my misaligned bite is causing my TMD to flare terribly and I'm living with constant jaw pain and headaches, which are getting worse by the week. I'm terrified that he's going to say I'm having them off next month (like he mentioned in January) as I feel I've spent $6K on getting a whole new kind of unstraight teeth and while I know the front alignment could be fixed in that time, there's no way one adjustment can fix my rear molars which still flare and are now on average .5 cm outside of the rest of my arch.

I feel even more depressed looking back at previous photos, and wishing I could go back to how they looked 6 months ago, where I might have been frustrated with the lack of changes, but was overall, really happy with how my teeth looked.

This photo, shows my last adjustment. If you look, you can see that one has a slightly straighter edge and the other slightly more angled - take note of the tooth he shaved:



This is my new alignment:


Notice the red line? That traces the edge of that tooth. If I were to draw a line down the middle, that tooth encroaches the midline by around 1ml to 1.5ml due to it's slant.

The one person I tried to talk to about it told me that it's all in my head and that my teeth look straight to them and I couldn't get across the fact I was really talking about my midline and the shape of my teeth rather than 'straightness'.

So that's where I'm at now. Desperately unhappy with my smile and trying to work up the courage to talk to my ortho at my adjustment this week. I know I have to, and I know I've been putting it off for 3 months, which I should never have done. My excuse is I was waiting for him to notice and to fix these problems himself, in reality it looks like he's not as attentive as I thought he was at the beginning; I've also lost the trust in him that allows me to think he can properly correct the problem, and not make it worse instead.

So here's where your support it so important - as people who are going through the same thing and probably have the same point of view I do... Is that slant really just in my mind, or is it really there? Or maybe am I just being too picky? I don't think I am, really the only thing I knew I couldn't be happy with no matter how I tried is an off midline, and as far as I can see, that's what I've got.

*sigh. Anyway, thanks all for taking the time to read, and if you have a second to let me know your opinion on my midline, I really would be so, so appreciative!