Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi y'all!

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone's braces stories, so I figured I'd post my own!

As my username suggests, I am congenitally missing my lateral incisors. (That's a 2% of the population I wish I didn't belong in!). I had braces as a young teen to close assorted gaps and to prepare spaces to replace the missing teeth. After 17ish years in two Maryland bridges, I opted to have them replaced rather than simply rebonded when one of them detached recently. When I asked about having the bridges remade, my dentist mentioned that a short stint in braces could realign my front two teeth. (I was never given an upper retainer as it was assumed that the bridges would keep my teeth from moving. Not so!)

The wonkiness of those two teeth has bothered me a lot over the past few years, so I am SUPER excited to have them fixed! As far as the laterals go, I do get bummed about the missing teeth quite often. I wish I had had a canine substitution during my first stint in braces, but I was too young to make that call myself. The intention was always that I would get implants, but I am a huge weenie with a good deal of dental anxiety, so I have never been able to go through with it! The Maryland bridges have worked fine, though, so why mess with success? They are also made of better materials nowadays, so my new fake teeth with look a lot more natural than my old ones!

Maybe one day I'll go through with the implants. I can tell you that the nine zillion dental visits I've had in the past month is making my anxiety subside, for sure!

Let me see if I can get some pics to post. I will post a couple of befores and one from bracing day (June 28, 2016). I am expected to be in the braces for about 4 months. I feel like kind of a dork, but I'm having great fun being in braces again! It's exciting to begin noticing changes, and I love being able to choose ligature colors. I doubt I'll still feel like that in four months, but hey! I'll hang onto the positive outlook as long as I can!
In this pic of my uppers, I am wearing a tension-fit flipper that my dentist made for me. Although the color was better-matched to my natural teeth than my permanent fakies, that thing was the bane of my existence! Having acrylic sitting on my gums alllll day long irritated them SO badly!!! Note- I still have a lot of excess cement on the back of those two teeth. I'm having it drilled off this coming week. The previous dentist had used so much cement that it's going to be a time-consuming process.

Here are my chompers on bracing day! I have one fake tooth attached to my archwire. The other Maryland bridge is still bonded in because my other fake tooth had not come in yet. I'm having the bridge removed and the new fake tooth attached to my wire at the same time that I have the extra cement drilled off. I feel a good deal of pressure in the bridge- I don't know why it hasn't popped off already! That would be much more convenient than having to get it removed at the dentist!
Here is the view of my uppers from today, five days post-bracing. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can swear that I see a little bit of movement from my before pic!

I had my second Maryland bridge removed today. I've spent more than half my life with metal wings cemented to the backs of those two abutment teeth! They felt SO thin once the bridge was out- weirdest feeling ever!

Now that the bridge is gone, I can really tell that central incisor is about to start moving. It's sore already!

My husband looked at me today and said that it looked like my teeth had moved some! So exciting! The fake laterals don't look great- my ortho left then bulky to try to prevent them from rotating on my round wire. I think he will probably grind them down some once I get my square wire.