Initially apart from being a bit annoying I didn’t find the spacers too much of a problem. I couldn’t wear my night splints as they wouldn’t fit over everything but I had dinner on the first day as normal and figured I’d just get used to the ‘stuck food’ sensation in a few days..I’d just have to work out which bits were the spacers and which bits were actually food stuck in my teeth and make sure I didn’t pick the wrong bits out.

I woke up on day two with my jaw aching but just ignored it and went to work, and again apart from occasionally finding myself subconsciously trying to  dislodge the ‘food’ in my teeth I didn’t think about them much- I was too busy at work and that took my mind off it. And then lunchtime came around..

OUCH! I my teeth were so tender that biting down on anything was awful. I had to kind of mash the food between my jaws and squish it with my tongue and then swallow it. It took over 30 mins to eat a supermarket spag bol ready meal for one! I then tried to eat a chewy mint as a breath freshener but that was just beyond me. I spat it out and used mouthwash instead!

Taking a paracetamol eased off the aching from lunch and the rest of the day was fine.

Dinner time was a disaster. I went out for Thai food and I had no idea how hard some foods are!! Carrots and beans were just agony to chew so I stuck to the rice and curry sauce. There were a few wisecracks around the table at my expense and my friends said they would club together to buy me a NutriBullet for Christmas, but I was just actually trying not to cry from the frustration of not being able to eat!

Again I told myself to suck it up and reminded the 12 yr old inside of me that I had paid for this and that this phase would not last forever.

I came home and just went to bed as sleeping seemed like a good way to make time go faster and perhaps tomorrow would be less painful!

 

After my initial appointment I went back for the  start of the real work- The Spacers..  These are little rubber rings that are inserted between the teeth where the permanent plate will sit. But because the teeth are already so crowded there is no way the metal bands of the plate will fit between them so the spacers are used to move the teeth apart a little to get the appliance in.

Really having them inserted is not much worse that flossing very hard. Of course most people having work done like this will have crowded teeth so it does mean that it’s pretty hard to get the spacers in the non-existent gaps between the teeth but with enough force the dentist was able to push them in. It didn’t really hurt much but I was seeing stars for a moment! I was a little woozy after i stood up but it lasted only a second or two. It was just a lot of force to your jaw and you have to brace against it.

They feel like bits of food stuck between your teeth and it’s really annoying! I kept trying to eject them with my tongue and i had to force myself to stop fiddling or wanting to pick them out with my fingernails!

They are at the back and sides of my mouth but they are black! Why are they not tooth coloured? It looks like you have huge bits of spinach stuck in your molars, and of course no-one really sees there but if you laugh or crack a big smile then they do look ugly. I reminded myself that it was only for 2 weeks and to stop being a baby and ignore them.

Easier said than done…..

I made the initial appointment to confirm that I was going to go through with this.

At that appointment the first thing the dentist wanted to know was what were my plans for the next few years? Which i thought was an odd question, but it turns out that because this process will take at least 2 yrs then he was checking that I wasn’t going to be moving out of the country, realise I’d always wanted to be man or find something else that was going to stop me halfway through and that I would able to follow through with the work. It’s a big deal changing your facial structure and it’s not something that you can just give up because you got bored or ask another practitioner to take on once it’s started. You will be in a 2 yr relationship with your dentist so you’d better like them!

He took CT scans of my head and neck and used a fancy computer program to work out all the angles and positions of my jaw and teeth and spine and how bad I was! Then his assistant took a huge amount of photos- for my before and after gallery!

I’m a huge medical nerd so I asked him for copies. The CT scans require proper equipment to read so I couldn’t get the full images but he was happy to give me the basic printout.

 

The photo on the left is a preferred profile for jaw length and teeth angle and I’m the one on the right. As you can see my upper teeth are so upright that they stop my lower jaw coming forward enough.

So the idea was the we were going to use a plate in my upper jaw/mouth to expand my upper jaw and then give room for the lower jaw to come forward. In theory this give my lower jaw more space and keep my tongue from blocking my airways and allow my neck and head to sit in a balanced position.

Of course i’m not a dentist so i’m sure there are more technical terms for it but that was the gist of it!

The other areas of problem that he was hoping to gain relief from were also my sinus breathing- by bringing the upper palate forward I would allow more room for my sinuses and there may be a possibility of then opening up my compressed tear duct again. He did admit that was purely a guess at this point but he was very keen to find out if it did work!

The other huge bonus for me was that it would lift and stretch my face forward so that my cheekbones would be more prominent, my nose slightly smaller in comparison and my wrinkles would be smoothed out. Show me a 45 yr old who doesn’t want that to happen???!!

That seemed like a good reason to drop $10K on it then and there!!

I’m actually not doing this for vanity but I openly admit that a bit of a face lift along the way is a great incentive to follow it through. I had a look at lots of pictures on ‘orthodontic facelift ‘ sites and my inner weeping 12 yr old stopped crying. Even my brother did comment after looking at the before and after photos on the sites that he had no idea why but everyone seemed more attractive at the end!

I signed up for the production of the plate and went to pay was delighted to find that my health fund did cover the initial bill of nearly $1000. So for the first time in my life I came away from the dentist looking forward to going to my next appointment- The Spacers.

 

 

The reason for my decision to get braces is written in the About section of this website. I will be posting updates of what it’s like to go through the process of getting orthodontic work as a 45 yr old! It will be my own personal experience and I am not dentist so it will be my interpretation of what is happening to me so I apologise in advance if there are errors in my terminology! I hope to give you insight into what the process may involve and how painful it is and if it works for the problems I outlined in the other section. I Hope you get something out of it and perhaps make a decision on what treatment might suit you.