Thanks everyone!
Just as a quick aside - I completely understand everyone who says they have anxiety which affects their every day life. There are several things I do, on a daily basis, to try to avoid anxiety inducing situations... things that aren't ordinary for most people, which have become ordinary for me.
Anyhow...
I left work, drove about 40 minutes to get to the office, then waited for 30 minutes for my appointment because they had an emergency before me. My appointment ran probably about an hour and 45 minutes. I got x-rays, pictures, and molds. Then I had a series of things done to my teeth, mostly had to do with preparing them for the brackets. A lot of rinsing and spitting. Then finally the brackets, then the wire, then the spacers.
None of it hurts expect for the spacers, and honestly the spacers probably wouldn't have been that bad except the ortho assistant tried to put them in with one tool, then said that was too big and tried another tool, then tried floss and couldn't get them, so she would have them a little bit and then have to take them back out. Finally she called in the ortho and he got them in quickly! Though it hurt, it was by far the quickest part of the process!
I went back to work, and, the girl who sits next to me unfortunately is a loudmouth and pretty much made me uncomfortable right away by yelling, "So you have your braces now?!" UGH.
I was mortified when another girl came up and said, "So I hear you have braces!" because this confirmed that everyone heard my loudmouth neighbor. Well, then she told me, she had braces for 4 years and has to get them again! So this actually made me feel better. She was supportive.
Everything else is basically just what everyone else says after braces. They just feel HUGE. My mouth dries quickly so I'm always drinking water but for some reason I'm not so good at drinking without drooling a bit.
I have to almost relearn to drink! I tried to eat my first "meal" (cottage cheese) and it was frustrating for me, because I honestly was having a hard time differentiating if I had food on/in my teeth or if those were just the braces!
As far as pain, only soreness so far, though I've been taking Ibuprofen and Tylenol. I felt around to make sure nothing was poking me, but surprise, surprise, just a few hours later, I'm being poked! I was going to just let my cheek keep getting poked and let the scar tissue build up, but I figured to give myself a break on the first day and stick some wax on there. I couldn't actually really get the wax to break off. It's kind of stuck to the container it came in, and when I tried to pick some off of the end of the stick, I just had little bits come out from under my fingernails. I finally did get some though and gobbed it on the offending bracket/wire.
My ortho gave me a toothbrush, a proxa brush, wax, and floss, and those little colored tablets. Nothing exciting. They said they were going to give me a t-shirt that I could wear to the appointments to get points, and then the points add up and at the end of treatment I can get a gift certificate, but all of my adjustments will be right after work so I wouldn't be able to wear the t-shirt anyhow so I didn't ask about it when they forgot to give it to me.
Well anyhow, I'm happy to say it's been pretty uneventful so far! A tad bit of frustration only because of being extremely self conscious, and at the annoyance of having something new (and huge-feeling) in my mouth, but other than that everything has gone just as expected.
Thanks so much for the encouraging words everyone!
