I had my second six-week visit with my orthodontist this morning. I'm at the three month mark; only fifteen months to go!
You know, it's kinda like redecorating a house, going in to see Dr. Hood and his staff. I walk out with all kinds of new accessories and gizmos every time I drop by; little baggies of rubber thingamajigs and pamphlets of instructions; and an entirely new "look" draped across my pearly whites. It's like a surprise party for my teeth.
Today, there were a few new developments. First, I switched from a heat-activated ROUND wire to a heat-activated SQUARE wire. This kind of wire locks into the rectangular groove in the bracket better than round wires do. Round wires slip and slide (they're supposed to.) Every wire has a purpose during treatment, and apparently, I'm at the copper, square, heat-activated wire phase in mine. Next time, I'm told, we'll move to a non-heat-activated, stainless steel wire; one that's much thicker and with a lot less give. At that stage we'll be "fixing" the teeth in place, more or less; giving the roots time to cement them back in after so much pushing and fussing about with 'em.
For now, I still have a bit of "up and down" to fix up, and my Curve of Spee is still dipping where it should be more straight across, and my bite is a bit open at the canines (you can kinda see thru it and there are a lot of gaps), so Dr. Hood still wants me in wires that move teeth, rather than fix them in place. Bummer, that, because the prediction was that we'd move to stainless steel archwire THIS time. Does that mean I'm behind schedule? Despite being the most conscientious patient I can possibly be, my teeth have a will of their own, it seems. I'm reminded of something i was told (or read) when I first started on this journey: Kid teeth move as if through Jello. Adult teeth move as if thru cement.
Amen to that.
Second, my six top front teeth are now "laced" with white wire, rather than being secured to the archwire with alastics. That's great on the one hand because it means those teeth are in a good position (more or less) that Dr. wants to maintain. Plus, as an added bonus, there's that much less rubber alastic in my mouth to get stained and icky, and that much less for me to change out between visits (it's not a super quick process, frankly, and it's rather fiddly.)
On the other hand, I now have yards of white, twisted wire laced across my teeth, which I think makes them look yellower than they really are. Oh well. I've just about abandoned all vanity in this process at this point. I look silly, but people are being kind, and I'm still me, and my teeth are getting fixed, so in the end, who gives a crap? My husband Tim, always the therapist, reminds me that how I look is the least important thing about me. And of course, even without his reminders, I know that's true. But YOU try buying into that 100% of the time when you're wearing the entire Southern Pacific railroad line in your mouth!! :)~
Mostly, when it comes to my feelings about braces these three months out, I have but one remaining complaint: I just want to stop collecting cheesy white gunk in my teeth! I swear to God, no matter how much I brush and rinse and floss -- and I do both, a LOT, since getting braces; multiple times daily -- I swear, there's always some globby mass of slimy white crap waiting for me to dig out that I somehow missed, hiding in a groove or behind a bracket somewhere. Braces, in this regard, suck major eggs.
Last, joy-oh-joy!, I get to wear RUBBER BANDS at night, at least until my next visit. They're wimpy rubber bands at best; I don't anticipate any pain. Which left me wondering, why use them at all? But apparently they'll apply just enough pressure to close the "open" part of my bite near the canines, where my smile is all "hole-y", and they'll do all this work at night, while I'm asleep -- or supposed to be! :)~
I find all of this stuff endlessly fascinating and I try to learn what, exactly, my ortho doc is DOING, and why, when I visit -- and not just have my teeth worked on while I zone out. I'm sure I drive them a little crazy with my questions. While I never had much urge to be a dentist (breathing stink breath all day does not sound romantic or rewarding), seriously, I think I would have made a dedicated and passionate orthodontist. It's amazing what a little smarts about physics, combined with the right technology, can do to fix smiles -- and for some people, lives.
Anyway, enough blathering on. Here's my three month progress shot. I've found that the best way to "see" progress is to look NOT at the teeth themselves, but at the brackets; at their relative positions. For example, the two lower middle teeth started out with brackets very close together, almost touching... and three months out, they've moved significantly apart, even though my teeth have NOT -- there's no gap between them. This reflects some kind of rotation they've made over the last few months, such that the brackets ended up farther apart, but the tooth edges did not. Interesting! (Or maybe I'm just a geek. Distinctly possible, that.)
The changes are small but significant when you measure from Day 1, but unfortunately they're not as visible to you folks as they are to me, because you don't have the benefit of a 360-degree view of what's been going on at the sides. My rotated teeth are mostly un-rotated at this point (canines especially), and my upper teeth are forming into a kind of "smile" curve, rather than the odd straight-across line they had before. I notice, too, that my lip moves across my teeth differently since they form more of an arc. I can't wait to see/feel how it all looks and functions at the end of all this. A certain fascination with the process has overtaken my self-consciousness, and now, I'm just curious to see the end result!!
