Day 3

Brace Myself—I Got Braces

I am in jail—I just got braces that is. All the metal, the behind bars look, the permanent and lengthy sentence, pain and shame—yeah, that's pretty much sounding like jail to me.

I feel like a kid.

I got  braces today. They are ceramic braces and I got them applied to my upper and lower arches. The process took well under an hour and wasn't as long as expected for the 2 hours which I was quoted for. It wasn't painful either, merely uncomfortable, with the plastic trays which pulled my mouth open pushing at sensitive areas, like gums. The pain set in the pretty much well later that day, and my mouth felt like it had been punched for the week.

Please ignore the gum. It's key lime pie flavour and it's delicious.

My orthodontist put on what he refers to as clear ligatures around each bracket, but I know they're pearl because they have a slight tinge to them. He didn't even ask me what colour I would like because he knows I want them to be discreet. From what I've read about online, the pearl colour stains less than clear, and with the amount of no-no stainer things I drink—always through a straw now, mind you—they hold up well.

Before putting my lower archwire on, the orthodontist lightly and nonchalantly filed away at the spaces between my front two incisors. This was to make a little bit more room for my teeth to move back in the lower jaw. He also gave me some GC Recaldent Tooth Mousse paste to use on the area five times a week to aid in the formation of new enamel in those areas. The stuff is really great.

The elastic bands on either side are of the 'E' variant which I got from day one to wear 24/7 to fix the underbite. They are worn from the second last molars which have the molar bands and hooks, to the space between the second lower incisor and canine where the orthodontist has made a small loop in the archwire to hook onto. The lower archwire is doubled over itself in an interesting way and loops over all the molars twice. The bubble gum, I can finally chew, and is excellent and is key lime pie flavour.

Not to scare anyone, but I can't forget the very quite indeed pain of when the orthodontist slipped when using a pointy tool to apply the hard-to-get-on molar band of my right tooth. It was bad, is all I can say—and it happened twice.

I got molar bands on my top arches only, which I guess is a good thing. Less metal is more, don't you know what they say, ladies?

At first, it felt really weird, just like there was extra space in my mouth. Almost like my teeth had grown and they stuck out a little in my mouth against my lips. It didn't look all that bad either, which I was happy about. It looked as good as braces could look, let's put it that way.

And with that, I finally have braces. Am I happy about it? Well, I can't say I'm disappointed, which is a good thing. I can't wait 'til they're off already. I have to keep telling myself it's for perfect teeth.

Plate Expander of Doom—Maxillary Arch Expander

I can luckily say that I am no longer experiencing the wonders and absolute pleasures of having to wear a plate anymore. It is a complete and utter death trap. A lisp-producing, liberal saliva-giving piece of orthodontic technology which I am absolutely glad is behind me.

I wore the removable maxillary arch expander plate 23/7 for 3 months since Tuesday, 5 October 2010—minus about an hour a day for eating. I used a winding prong weekly to tighten the plate by 45° in each of the three dimensions. It opened up my arch and gave me a little gap between my front teeth—months 2 and 3 are shown below—which was as expected.

It gets smelly, you can't completely close your teeth down together, and chewing gum—which I did para-religiously—is pretty hard to do. What can I say, it's great!

Maybe I'm most definitely overreacting here, and if you ever have to wear one of these, just think of how much it'll be worth it in the end, but this thing is horrible. The worst of it is the socially-debilitating lisp which is most likely the cause of the profuse amounts of saliva I had constantly pooling in my mouth. It was really hard for someone like me who never really does shut up.

It didn't hurt at all, which was a positive. It just felt like a firm pressure behind my teeth and upper roof of mouth. The only real good thing about it was that it wasn't very visible, but the clincher was that it was removable. If it wasn't, I'm not too sure how well I would have fared if it weren't.

Getting accustomed to the plate being in my mouth, and my speech around it, did get a little bit better after the first couple of weeks, but it wasn't anything to get really excited about. It didn't completely feel or sound normal, even after the first month and a half, but I did just get over it—aside from the speech which made me sound like, to be honest, I had a problem. I really wanted to be done with it, but not so much completely, because I wasn't looking forward to braces. Catch-22, really. What I can say was I was extremely happy when I got my blue, baby spacers put in today and only had to wear the plate for 16 hours a day until Friday, 28 January 2011, the date when I get my braces.