"What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been" - Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead

[Shelleyt]

Congrats congrats! Hope it all holds up before your date! So glad it'll all finally be over for you, king of patience. Now we can't wait for your retainer tales!

[SinkFullOfDinner]

...Hope it all holds up before your date!

Thanks, Shelley! I'm sure it'll hold up between now and then. Heck, with everything tied together at this point, I can't imagine where they could possibly wander off to! I just need them to behave for awhile during the debond appointment.

Given the gaps' habit in recent months of having one reopen every time another closed, he said he was initially inclined to give them a month to let some more bone form around the new position after the next appointment, but getting the extra visit in and seeing that he could close that last bit of gap two weeks early tipped the balance in my favor. If something opens up a little when they debond (his only concern), he said there are some things he can do to address that with the retainer, if needed.

As you mentioned a nightmare scenario previously, mine is getting in there and having something open up right away and having him say "let's give this one more month." That would just be so par for the course! This process has turned me into an accomplished epic-fail generator and Murphy's Law devotee!

What's going on with you? I don't recall seeing any update to your thread in....well, forever.

[Shelleyt]

I've had an eventful few months but am a poor updater.... mostly just commiserate with the others around these parts who have dealt with impacted canines as old people. Long story short the impacted canine didn't improve at all, so it's now been extracted and we are just closing up gaps on the bottom, aligning bite, and being done with the thing. I have one upper tooth that's causing problems. I've been on the last upper wire for awhile but looks like we will need to rescan and get another one to accommodate this one tooth. I'll have an implant placed after the braces are off. Unfortunately ended up with way too much space on the bottom so no clue how long it'll be! At least four more months while the extraction site heals at the very least, but I have a feeling the ortho portion may take at least that long. But still progress, after so many months of none, so I'll take it!

[BlondeCam]

Dang Sink, you are a case study in Murphy's Law! Sorry to hear about the delay but sounds like the end is in sight. More importantly are you hitting any fall/ winter Dead and Company shows! Andrew and o are going to Orlando next month! I could resist. It's been 10-12 years for me and 25 for his one and only show.

[SinkFullOfDinner]

Oh no, Shelley! Last I recalled, it was supposedly just about to break through and get a bracket on it for the final pull. I went to your “impacted canine” updates that followed and can only imagine the frustration. What a gut punch , but sounds like you’ve bounced back. Seeing progress again hopefully helps with the mood.

I have to ask after reading those updates: Did you really agree to have cadaver bone grafted – on Halloween?!! Brave. A little spooky. And a lot crazy?

You also mentioned that the gap that'll be hanging around is more noticeable with “no front-facing braces to distract from it.” Well that’s easy to remedy. Just order up some distraction and make the switch from lingual to ceramic! I hear that’s a hot trend these days, lol!! If you can handle cadaver parts on Halloween you can surely handle that.

If you’re not up for that (I don’t blame you), I’ve seen others mention that their ortho put a fake tooth placeholder on their wire to fill in a similar space. Any chance your ortho could do the same on a lingual wire? If not, there's always that ceramic solution just to get the fake fill in! Ok, I’ll stop trying to recruit company.

Most of all, good luck!

BC - “Such a long, long time to be gone,” but nice of you to come back and slum it with the braced folks! No plans to hit the Dead & Company tour, unfortunately. Not many tour dates and nothing nearby. A road trip would probably sound like a good decision on the way there, but the return would just seem like “a long, long, long, long way to home.”

Yes, it looks like I’ll be wrapped up soon. Finally. Every time I saw another “they’re off!” post over the last few months, I felt happy for them, but also kept thinking I’d like to Steal Your Face and swap it for mine. (That one seems too easy, right? How’d we missed that, or something with “steel” your face?! Ok, now I’m just humoring myself.)

[SinkFullOfDinner]

My wife asked what I thought the odds were that everything would check out and the scheduled debonding date would go as currently planned. I said 90-99%. My son heard the exchange and said, “yeah, but didn’t you say the same thing a year ago?”

Anybody interested in a kid? Free delivery included.

[EmilyTravels]

My wife asked what I thought the odds were that everything would check out and the scheduled debonding date would go as currently planned. I said 90-99%. My son heard the exchange and said, “yeah, but didn’t you say the same thing a year ago?”

Anybody interested in a kid? Free delivery included.

[SinkFullOfDinner]

Last comment about lacing, I promise – probably.

I think the laced wire is like having a fine mesh sieve woven into your braces. That little bit of space that used to be between the brackets is now further subdivided into smaller spaces between the lacing wire and archwire, lacing wire and bracket, and of course lacing wire and tooth. All the better to trap and hold onto the smallest of items. It also scoffs at the power swish attempts of mere mortals.

It’s also incredibly entertaining when you finally navigate the floss threader behind the archwire, only to discover that the floss isn’t sliding anywhere because you’ve actually threaded it between the archwire and lacing wire. Yes, it is possible to make flossing an even bigger PITA.

And let’s not forget how effective it is at straining out the pulp from your orange juice, which makes it look like you’ve either eaten Cheetos for breakfast or have orange carpet fibers growing from your braces.

I’m pretty sure that this straining feature is the same process that whales use to filter great quantities of plankton, and now I can too. I love learning new tricks right up until the end. Just awesome.

As you can probably tell, I’m about at the end of my rope and starting to lose it!

[atrixa]

Yeah, I have the wire lacing. It just shreds floss and acts as a porridge oats holder *shudder*

[SinkFullOfDinner]

And they’re off!

Until I saw pliers in his hand, I was convinced that he’d find some reason to change his mind and postpone it a month so he could tweak one thing or another. Those popping, breaking, and shattering sounds of brackets being ripped off were music to my ears.

They gave me an early Christmas present of Essix retainers, but the Hawleys will have to wait four wks. I’m pleasantly surprised by how thin the Essix are. I’d kind of prepared myself to have them feel pretty thick and bulky and awkward, but they’re not…except for having double the material sitting between your bite. That part definitely feels weird to start with. No lisp, no nothing. Awesome.

I wasn’t expecting the 24/7 instructions, though. I’d been hoping to get lucky and go straight to night-time wear, but that wouldn’t be at all consistent with the way anything has gone with this. So basically for now I feel like I’ve swapped braces for an Invisalign-ish routine of always having plastic-wrapped teeth except when eating. It’s still a good trade, but I can’t wait to get to night-only.

Oh, another pleasant surprise that hopefully will be the same for you. I thought I might decide to do a little whitening when everything came off because things looked a bit dingy toward the end, but once everything was buffed off, things looked pretty great. Apparently, it’s not just the bracket adhesive that discolors a bit, but also the coating they paint on beforehand to help with adhesion. That goes all over the surface and is probably the biggest culprit in things looking dull over time. But it comes off with everything else. Nice!

Other than that, things just feel incredibly…normal! Or back to normal. It’s a very good feeling.

Really happy with the results, and sure I’ll be doubly happy when I’m old(er) and everything’s still where it’s supposed to be, and I’m not dealing with the consequences of the do-nothing option. But I’ve also decided that it’s probably not an accident that you hardly ever hear of an ortho plan estimate longer than 2 yrs. Had my plan mentioned that this would take 3 yrs and about the high viz elastics, and that the linguals would morf into ceramics for the last 11 mo of it, I know I would have sprinted out of the office. Sometimes it’s better if you just don’t know. It needed to be done, but I know I wouldn’t have done it. I just know.

[assertives]

Woots!! Congratulations!!

Please share some pictures!!

[EmilyTravels]

Awesome...congratulations!

Was it painful getting your brackets removed and the adhesive buffed off? I've read on here that it is really painful for some folks, and I fear I'll be one of them.

Glad to hear that you didn't think you needed to whiten after getting them off. My teeth look really yellow since getting my braces on, so I figured immediate whitening would be required. Hope most of it will just buff off.

[Prometheus]

Congrats SFOD! Glad you are pleased with the outcome. I’m doing elastics now and closing in on the 3 year mark. Wondering when it will be over, but worry it might be another year....aaargh.

[Ali]

First, congrats on getting your braces off!

Second, I clicked on this thread because of the title, and I want to thank you for writing one of the most entertaining threads I've read in a long time. I hope you continue to write!

[SinkFullOfDinner]

Thanks, assertives, ET, Prometheus, and Ali! It’s awfully nice to be on the receiving end of a congratulations for once!

Awesome...congratulations!
Was it painful getting your brackets removed and the adhesive buffed off? I've read on here that it is really painful for some folks, and I fear I'll be one of them....

Popping the brackets off wasn’t bad. The metal ones come off a bit easier, as others have said, probably because they’re a little smaller, which means less surface area to the base and less cement. idk, just my theory.

It seems the choice of tool matters a lot for the ceramics, because the first pop off was not that great, and I started mentally trying to add up the number of remaining ceramics and thinking “holy crap, this is going to suck.” But then he used a different pliers and it made all the difference. The rest popped off with about the same effort as the metal ones.

One temporary letdown happened with the first opportunity to run my tongue over the surface, expecting that smooth feeling everyone talks about, but then all I felt was rough cement remnants and some random edges of ceramic base that broke off. And I'm thinking, “boooo, that was over-hyped.” Seems my expectations were a bit premature. The smooth swipe comes later, so you’ll just have to chill out for a few minutes.

The buffing is no big deal (um, Shelleyt and other lingual folks, if you’re reading you might want to skip to the next section right about now), especially compared to when they buffed the lingual side in Jan. The linguals’ base covers a lot of the back surface of the tooth (at least the Incognito ones did), so they wind up having to burr grind pretty close to the gumline to get everything. I’ve never really had much sensitivity, but wow there were a couple areas that sent a jolt through me when they got close to the edge, and it tensed me up the rest of the way. They used a term that I’ve since forgotten to describe certain nerves that are nearer the surface in the area near the end of the enamel. As you can tell, the only part of the definition that I remembered was the word “nerve.” Yep, that’s accurate. Wish I’d had the foresight to bring some of that Anbesol or Orajel to dull things up back then. I'd be ok not doing that side again. I didn’t mention it in the post back then because I figured that I’d b!tched and moaned enough about the change of bracket systems.

Congrats SFOD! Glad you are pleased with the outcome. I’m doing elastics now and closing in on the 3 year mark. Wondering when it will be over, but worry it might be another year....aaargh.

Prometheus, thanks for the comments back in Jan, as well. Yes, the open-endedness with a sprinkle of triangle elastics leaves much to be desired as you approach the 3yr mark. At some point around the 2.5yr mark, I think I just hit a numbed state! Maybe you’re there now, also. Hang in there!

First, congrats on getting your braces off!...

Hey, Ali. Thanks for the nice comment. I went to your thread and it looks like you just recently got rolling. Good luck with this round two for you. I can’t really imagine that there’ll be too much to write about now. That’s probably a good thing. Just a bunch of weeks where you look in the mirror and think to yourself, “Yep, exactly where they were last week, thank goodness.” Isn’t that the point of retainers – nothing is supposed to happen? Who knows, though. Maybe I’ll accidentally swallow a Hawley and have an interesting x-ray to post!