Metal Mouth Message Board

I was really good at taking photos at first and now I keep forgetting! Just took a recent one now but the quality is not nearly as good as the first few as the first ones were done in bright sunlight. Anyway I hope to keep up on it a bit better, as I find it interesting!

Starting out in May of 2009...you cannot see it but I had two teeth extracted on the top the week before:


Taking another picture the end of May 2009, already showing movement:


June 2009


Here midline is getting significantly "off" due to pulling teeth back to fill in the extraction sites...The silver colored wire is to pull up my bite:


Here is a poor quality but current photo...very "ugly ducking" as they are pulling back the side tooth in prep to realign the center tops....Looks pretty bad haha. Also my bottom lip always seems to be in some very minor state of swelling with the bottom braces....annoying little things they are!


I'll try to upload a better photo similar to the first ones (taken outside) soon!

So anyway I wanted to add that I got the extractions partly because of a dentist who messed me up as a kid...took out two lowers and did not match with the uppers. My current ortho said that I should have had a palate extender when a kid, and either no teeth extracted, or all FOUR matching teeth extracted.

My jaws are a squared shape (can see it in the teeth molds) so it will be hard to get a perfectly wide round shape...my mouth is a bit narrow and again...he did say I should get surgery but there is no way...so instead we are doing what we can with the braces. My choices were between getting extractions or getting teeth filed down to make room...I decided since the one dentist messed me up, may as well finish the job so chose the extractions...anyway filing sounds gross.

Just wanted to say that your teeth look great!

I think I have the same thing as you.. the square shap jaws.. I am hoping my arch ends up being nice and round looking.. it's so hard to tell if that's being achieved but I think it is. I just worry that my arch will get small at the same time they round it off.

From what I remember in another thread.. are you using an expander? Top and bottom? I really want to use an expander, even if it's just to maintain my arch size, especially as she attempt to retract my top teeth.. I really worry about that.

No...he told me I should have gotten one as a kid...I'm too old (35) to use an expander now, without surgery. And I didn't want surgery.

Here is a better quality photo taken today, same general time period as the last photo above but I tried to make my mouth be the same shape as the ones above for better comparison. The midline is BADLY off...I'm hoping they put the powerchain on soon to get it fixed up.

Your arch doesn't look so narrow from the picture.. Regarding using expanders as an adult, it seems many here have used them... It's all so confusing because my ortho told me the same thing, and also that it would make my bite off because my bottom would need expanding too.

As for your midline, I'm sure they will fix... It seems like you have crowding on the bottom and there will be quite a bit of movement fro that so I m sure there will be no problem fixing the midline.

VA5 wrote:Your arch doesn't look so narrow from the picture.. Regarding using expanders as an adult, it seems many here have used them... It's all so confusing because my ortho told me the same thing, and also that it would make my bite off because my bottom would need expanding too.

As for your midline, I'm sure they will fix... It seems like you have crowding on the bottom and there will be quite a bit of movement fro that so I m sure there will be no problem fixing the midline.

The front looks okay...soon I need to take pix of the inside of my mouth. Its when you look at that (or a mold of my teeth) that you can see how the jaw squares off and the teeth kinda go straight back instead of nicely rounding back. The nice thing is, it doesn't seem to show up too bad in a smile!

I didn't realize how bad my teeth were until my ortho was sitting there with me, showing me my molds in a consult room. Whoa.

Here's the inside...the top actually looks TONS better than it did at my consult...the wire has really straightened them out already. Sorry the bottom one is so blurry.

Is the thing on your top arch like an expander? What is it called and what's its function?

I think its called a "nance" and it holds the back teeth in place while the front ones are pulled back to fill in the gaps from the extractions.

Ohh, a nance. When did your ortho put that in? It looks cauterized to your bands. I am going to ask my ortho to use this when retracting my teeth. My back molars seem to move quite a bit so that would be a good thing to use.

They put that in almost right away. They fit the bands and then send it away to get the nance attached. I had to have mine redone a few times and then the metal attached to a different area as my bite kept snapping the wire after time!

Kitagirl: Your teeth look so great. It has really helped me not chicken out. My spacers are causing so much pain. I am 32 and will have two extractions after my upper and lowers are on. Thank you for the pictures and the post. It really helped.

Thanks Lys! The spacers are terrible but they won't last long!

^glad to hear it, I get my spacers put in in 2 days and I'm getting a bit nervous, but excited, too. How do they fit them in?