And they’re off!!

I was so nervous about seeing  the Ortho today; what if he’d changed his mind and forgotten that he’d told me they would come off today!

But no, he had remembered. He did ask straightaway was there anything that I was not happy with and did I want anything more moved or changed? But I didn’t really know, I wasn’t sure really what the finished product was supposed to be like so I didn’t really have any benchmark, I just asked him if anything more needed to be done.

I was given the Offical Nod of Approval and decided they could come off. One of the nice things about the appointment was that the Dental assistant who had started with me many moons ago was working that day so she remembered me from many previous appointments and gave me gentle ribbing about it all which actually made it all very lighthearted and relaxed, so I appreciated her for that.

The orthodontist just pulled out the wires and elastics and then just literally took a pair of dental pliers to each tooth bracket and cracked them off. It really hurt for a tiny split second for each tooth, but it took less than a minute and the whole lot were gone. SO WEIRD!! of course all my teeth were still rough from the cement but they all felt so loose! You know those dreams you have when you feel that your teeth are falling out? Yep. that’s what it felt like. But awake.

They then took a big grinder/polisher thingy to all my teeth and cleaned all the cement off. A lot of people had told me that when the braces come off things feel slimy but I didn’t really feel that. In fact in many ways my mouth felt exactly the same and when I moved my lips it still felt like I had the braces in there. I realised the because of wearing them so long the inside of my mouth was totally scarred and numb and thickened and it still felt like I had ‘thick’ lips!

I had a lower tooth capped, where it had chipped off 20 yrs ago and then they did lots of photos for their “Before and After” album. Then they did impressions of my new teeth for my retainers to be made but by that time I’d kinda tuned out to what was going on, I just kinda lay there and let them do things!

I did have a look in the little mirror above me but nothing really looked that different. The mirror just showed me with just ‘teeth’ rather than metal reflections and I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for a big Reveal and I just didn’t see that which was a bit of anticlimax but after being told to come back the next day to collect my retainer I was let out into the world.

I am no longer a Middle Aged Lady with Braces.