Well at least the pain has subsided and things feel kinda normal. As much as they do when you have metal lego blocks attached to every tooth in your head. Visually they don’t look great at my age but I know from experience that no-one really cares. I feel more self conscious from the inside more than others make me feel aware of it. As one person said when they look at me they just think  “Oh, she has braces” and that’s it. Nothing more. So i just accept that I have braces on my teeth and no-one cares. I’m very aware of when i’m eating that food gets stuck in them and make sure I find a mirror pretty quick to do a spinach test but overall having the braces on the outside of my teeth is actually better than the rack on the inside so I feel this next stage is a relief compared to the last stage!

Only one snag; since my teeth are overly far forward for the length of my lips at the moment and my jaw won’t close properly because of the brackets I can’t actually seal my mouth closed. Which means I can’t “eat with your mouth closed” as we were all taught as a child and I’m sleeping like a mouth breather at night and end up dribbling! So.Not. Cool.

I have an elderly cat that dribbles all the time when she’s being petted as she has lost most of her teeth and i’m starting to see her point.

I did talk to another lady who has braces if she was dribbling at night too and she told me that she had applied fake tan before she went to bed and woke up in the morning with a pale streak down her chin!!

Mental note to self; Apply fake tan in the morning.

Ok there is nothing remotely fun about this. Not one thing. The first night the pain was immense. Just that dull throbbing pain that anyone with braces, no matter how many years ago it was, has never forgotten. At least with childbirth you have endorphins and a baby to make up for it. With Braces there is no upside. I could barely eat soup as even the fear of the spoon clinking on my teeth just scared me into feeling full. And for those of you that drink soup from a a cup; No, just not gonna happen.

My ex-braced friend asked me a few months ago if I had cried while I was eating? and the answer is yes. Oh yes. And i’m not ashamed to admit it!

Dear Lord this is painful. This had better be worth it!

And my moment of joy and freedom was short lived. Only long enough for the Ortho to nip out to the next room and get the new brackets….

He put the little forsensic tent up around my mouth again but this time I was more prepared by slathering my lips in Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour creme ( it’s been my staple since I was 20)  so that my lips didn’t crack while he was setting my braces. Putting the brackets on was fine since the old set has just come out and the gaps were already there and then he bonded my little metal blocks to each tooth individually and strung his fencing wire through the gaps. He tightened and replaced the lower wire just for good measure, stating since I was going to be in pain for the top wire I might as well be in pain for the bottom one as well. Gee Thanks!

And I was flicked out to the big wide world as a full on Brace Face…..

Hurrah!!! My front teeth have been racked sufficiently so far forward that last week I was able to have the Rack removed. PURE JOY!!

The ortho took a huge pair of pliers to me and there was a resounding Crack and then the plate just dropped out and for a tiny moment I had my whole top of my mouth back to myself again. It was wonderful! It felt like my tongue had too much room and my lips were too loose and flapping around. Internally where the plate had rested up against my upper palette my skin was all wrinkled and swollen up, much like when you stay in the bath too long and you go all crinkly but sadly it was all short lived as he was gearing up for the next and much longer phase- The Train Tracks.

I found my ‘before’ photo on day one and you can see that my upper teeth and lips are much further forward in comparison to my lower lips. From the front it actually looks like i have quite buck teeth at the moment!

I haven’t written much recently. My neck was giving me so many problems that I could barely be at work let alone sit in front of the ‘puter’ when got home.

Something about the movement of my jaw just shut down my whole nervous system and everything seized up. I was so weak and both arms just would not lift up! I kept going to pick things up and then would just drop them. With a range of drugs, new splints at night, removal of the wires, low level laser therapy, chiropractic work and remedial massage things did settle down and got back on track but it was a miserable couple of months made more irritating by the fact that we had to undo all the tension from the braces. The brackets are awful and feel like someone has welded shelving units to my face and having them without the tension was just like sitting in transit again; Waiting and going nowhere.

But now we are back on track again 🙂