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 🙂

These are great little things. They are like little bottle brushes on a stick and they are great for cleaning around the brackets and used instead of floss. They come in various sizes for various gap sizes in-between teeth. I have been using the 00 size as my gaps are so small. Last night i discovered that the gap in my upper teeth is now so big that i can now pass the entire implement right through the gap! Handle and all. Hahaha. I had lots of fun with that!!

It’s the small things in life…….

Urgh, the weekend was nearly worse! I pretty much gave up with trying to massage things and get my neck to move so i just took a bunch of painkillers and tried to numb it out. I had one night when I was lying there actually with no pain in my neck and all natural feeling in my arm again ( it’s been  mildly numb for weeks) and it was just amazing. I didn’t get up that morning until 10.00 and just lay there and watched tv purely just to revel in the non- pain!!

I had been poking around the house for days so I wanted to get outside and ride my horses. That was a mistake. Stupid me.

I returned to the ortho today and he just got stuck in to my mouth again and took all the wires out of my lower jaw. I still have the brackets stuck on but there is no tension on my lower teeth at all now. He ground out all the splints from last week and did a completely new impression to get me some night splints that I can wear WITH my braces, just like I had before. I will go back and pick them up tomorrow.

My mouth feels really odd without the wires now, my tongue has all this room and my lower teeth now feel like they are lose and wobbly! The impression plate got stuck on all the brackets and was drying on my braces and he really had trouble getting it out and had to really pull on my jaw. That hurt a lot. My jaw is already tender and having him yank them all about was pretty hard going. I had the jaw trembles for a while after that.

Roll on tomorrow so I can pick up my splints! I hope it works as well as it did the first time.

I did have a thought though that if he said that he was going to remove all the ortho work and just give me the splints I would not necessarily want them all removed. I can see how my smile is changing by having my upper teeth forward more and I now i see how weak my lower jaw is for my face and I still want to continue with it all. I do believe that things will work out in the long run and I just think it’s something we have to work with- to get he braces to do their job long term but keep my jaw from locking in the short term.

And I’ve paid for it already.

Oh Dear it’s not going well. Because I have not been able to wear my original night splints which kept my jaw aligned and with the addition of the bottom brackets my jaw has totally backfired and I’ve ended up with my neck locking up again and my trapezius muscle going into total meltdown. This was the original reason I sought treatment in the first place! The night splints truly did unlock my neck and release all the problems within 2 nights of wear so of course that is why I was convinced that fixing my jaw permanently into position would help, but right now everything has gone backwards. Literally!

So after a few weeks of progressively getting worse and worse in the neck and getting to the point when i can’t sleep and can’t sit or stand I just rang the ortho to find out if there were splints i could use just short term. They told me to come in later that day and talk to him. When I got there he ranted that I should have come in earlier and why on earth was I putting up with it! But of course as my boyfriend pointed out that everyone knows that orthodontics was supposed to hurt and everything else had been so painful so far so how was I to know which pain was acceptable or not!

He blocked up my back teeth to create splints out of the brackets and sent me away with very strict instructions to call him after the weekend and if things were not better then I was to return.

The train tracks are not bothering me a whole lot more that the rest of it really. At home I don’t have any wax on and I’m to really noticing a whole not more weirdness than I have already had but I DO notice that now i really can’t eat anything. I thought it was bad before but now I have no bite at all.

For those of you who are in the same situation or wondering what to eat this is a rundown on my food this week

Brekky ; scrambled eggs. Not on anything. Just the eggs. I can put a bit of milk or melt cheese into it but that’s it. Just pure mushed up eggs. I have to have protein in the morning or I am hungry in 20 mins again, and I don’t like sweet things so all the yogurt-y things are out. And they are full of sugar too and that’s not a good substitute for anything.

Mid morning; I have taken a Chicken soup flavoured meal replacement soup to work and have some of that in a cup. It just keeps me going and take 2 mins to slosh down. Cut up banana also worked well. ( not in the soup obviously!)

Lunch; I’m at work of course so this week I found a ready made Massaman Curry  meals for one on special and eaten that each day. The meat was soft enough to mush down and it was tasty. Fresh raspberries for dessert. They are my friend.

Dinner: This week was an exercise in trying to find tasty filling things that required no biting at all.

Monday: Chipotle chicken mince and sweet potato comforter. This was a winner! The bread I gave to my other half!

https://www.delicious.com.au/recipes/chipotle-chicken-sweet-potato-comforter/xdoB0fgu

Tuesday; was Spaghetti Bolognese. Cut up into pieces this is always a staple !

Wednesday; Shepards Pie. Lamb mince of course… Are you noticing a theme with the mince varieties??

Thursday; Risotto, with pancetta, mozzarella, and basil.

Friday;  Chicken meatballs in carrot and tomato soup. ( back to the chicken mince again!) I will make Garlic bread to go with it as we have guests tonight and my poor boyfriend has only had soft foods all week- i thought he might like some chewy carbs!!

So that’s the week so far.. I’m glad I like cooking as it’s a bit of a challenge to consistently come up with ideas !

If anyone has any good ideas ( outside of smoothies and ice cream, which I don’t like anyway) let me know. The internet is great sometimes- I just put a few ingredients into google and then it comes up with things. Perhaps I should do a recipe page for those with braces, tooth ache or only gums!

The original ‘before’ photo.

This was the day before the bottom brackets were in. My upper jaw has moved forward and up and my smile is heaps better compared to the gummy one I had before!

So.Not.Cool.

Oh boy did the pain come in a couple of hours after fitting. There it was. That deep bone ache that you never forget. This was the pain I had been expecting with the other appliance but now the pressure was directly on my teeth my trigeminal nerve was on full alert.  I made dinner but had to take some Ibuprofen to dull things down a bit so that I could eat. I did read that taking ibuprofen with orthodontic pain is not the best idea as it’s the inflammatory process that happens when pressure is applied to the teeth that allows the moment to occur and anti- inflammatories such as ibuprofen would inhibit that process and slow it down. But that was all I had in the drawer and for one night I figured it would help me eat and i’d get some basic paracetamol tomorrow.

I know i’ve done a few posts recently moaning about the fact that I could not eat but little did i realise how far I had come in getting used to eating with my previous system. Now the brackets were there my lower teeth just crashed into my upper teeth at the front and none of my molars met up. I couldn’t bite down on anything and as soon as anything touched my front teeth then I was just closing my eyes waiting for the pain to subside. Wow, I was right back at the beginning and slurping my sauce from my meal and gave up on all the other ingredients.

It was pretty miserable so I ended up going to bed early just so i could be asleep and not notice it all.

I’ll get some photos up next post!

Well i’ve had the original appliances for nearly 5 months now and my top teeth have moved forward enough to allow my bottom teeth to be moved forward and out. Apparently because my lower teeth are out of alignment so much my Ortho decided that it was time to put the lower brackets on as he was going to have to take it all very slowly and it would take ‘ages’ to move. So I was booked in for the brackets to go on earlier than he thought. Great.

I had a moment at work to feel my teeth as they were now and what it felt like to still have no metal around that area and then off I dashed to the appointment. It was a bit like being a teenager again- I know I didn’t want to go to the appointment really, who likes going to the dentist? But it still was giving me a real excuse to duck out of work early so I skipped out like a kid bunking double chemistry!

I reclined in the chair and tuned out to what was about to happen. They used a white dental expander to hold my mouth open but it meant that I had no idea what was going on in my mouth as I could feel nothing with my lips. Strangely it reminded me of one of those forensic tents you see in crime scenes- lots of people peering into a hole in the ground but you can’t around the white curtains. No idea what made me think of that but I was trying to distract myself from the fact they were rattling around in my gob with    the sort of tools that you buy in hardware stores.

it didn’t really hurt at all but it tasted pretty yucky as the ‘glue’ fell onto my tongue and he fiddled and heated and cooled different brackets onto my teeth. My lips were so dry and started to crack as he pulled them wider to get more access and I made a mental note to use way more chapstick on my lips before I went next time! My tongue and mouth were so dry that my tongue was now stuck to my lower palette. I feel for those with Sjorgens Syndrome- I was only like that for 20 mins or so that was uncomfortable enough.

He didnt really talk to me, just barked instructions at his assistant but just near the end he took a pair of pliers, twanged the arch wire into place and then crunched the ends off and looked and me and said ” it’s just like fencing really.”

???     I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

Finally he released all the equipment and I sat up and was done. I didn’t dare look. Surprisingly it didn’t feel too bad. Of course all the brackets are on the outside of my teeth so it didn’t feel any different to my tongue as the back brackets have been there with my previous appliance so talking was the same as the last few months and it wasn’t a real problem. My lower front teeth tilt backwards so much that the new brackets don’t even touch my skin on my lips so i didn’t even feel them, only on the ‘corners’ where my mouth bends back to my molars.

I came home and really it was not too bad- but looking in the mirror was a bit of a shock. My boyfriend came over and said “ok, show me” and when he saw he just nodded and said “hmm….”

Not a great sign. The Ortho joked as I left that it was not possible to get more metal in my mouth now and when I saw my jaw then I knew what he meant. EVERY single tooth on my lower jaw has metal attached to it. So. Not. Cool. Thankfully it’s only my lower teeth so i can hide most of it most of the time but i dread the look when my top teeth get done!

But all was good and it was not a big change from things so far.

So Far.