Brace Myself

26, Essex, Class II Division II Malocclusion; Orthognathic surgery scheduled for Summer 2017. Braces fitted in Feb 2016.

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Progress between Week 3 and 10. I am constantly astonished by the speed at which my teeth are moving!

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13/04/16 - Week 9

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8 weeks into treatment, and what a difference there is already!

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The one when I broke my brace

I’ve got a confession to make, dear reader: I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth. (To friends and family reading this, I know that this will come as no surprise to you - in fact, I wouldn’t really view this as a confession; more a passing observation.) Unfortunately, having a sweet tooth is not compatible with wearing a brace. 

In my infinite wisdom (and after 6 weeks of cutting out the sweet treats) I decided to make some chocolate cornflake cakes to celebrate Easter. These delicious Easter treats contain all the ingredients that are on the NO, DEFINITELY NOT ALLOWED IN A MILLION YEARS list:

Refrigerated chocolate

Mini Eggs

Sticky Golden Syrup 

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. I’d let it cool to room temperature! I’d use a knife and fork to break up and eat the cake with! That was, until, I bit down on something hard -  the back anchor bracket from my brace. 

Cornflake cake: 1, Brace: 0

I never want to see another cornflake cake again.

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Just had my wire and bands changed - my bands are super tight now! Feeling the burn already!

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15th March 2016; I’m really perfecting the ‘dead behind the eyes’ look.

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First world water flossing problems.

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It's been almost 6 weeks since I started my treatment, and I'm sure you're all dying to know where i'm at following #currygate a few weeks ago. Good news! I no longer look like someone has attacked my bands with a highlighter! Here's what I've learnt so far: 1. I can survive without chewing gum and still avoid having death breath. 2. Yellow Listerine is amazing at reducing curry stains. 3. Eating spaghetti is a no-no. Ditto spinach. 4. Apparently it's not the 'done thing' to absent-mindedly pick spinach out of the back of your brace at the dinner table (sorry, Dean). It's my first tightening appointment (which doesn't actually involve any tightening) next week, and I plan to gorge on as much yellow-coloured curry as humanly possible the night before. Got to take my wins (and my Chicken Tikka Biriyani) where I can.

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8th March 2016; definitely seeing some movement in my front teeth!

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1st March 2016; Week 3

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23rd February; Week 2! I think there has been some subtle progress. #braces #orthodontics #adultbraces #ceramic #teeth

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16th February 2016; 1 Week

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9th February 2016; last photo before my braces went on

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I spent half an hour picking spaghetti out of my brace a few nights ago. The struggle is real.

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After a few days of surviving on nothing but scrambled eggs, soup and dust, we decided to order a curry in for dinner – nice and soft if you go meat-free, plus enough calories to stop the near-faint feeling I had unhelpfully developed through lack of sustenance. I all but inhaled the vegetable curry and rice and was feeling smugly satisfied with myself before looking down at the white plate and seeing the trail of yellow it had left behind. The penny dropped. Turmeric. I’m still trying to scrub the turmeric residue out of my chopping board from the paella I made three years ago. Hell, I’m still perplexed by the way a korma stained our kitchen worktop after a spillage that was wiped up in seconds. My braces are white. My wire is white. My elastics are white. Oh god. I whipped my boyfriend’s phone out of his hand and open up the front-facing camera. Luminous rings beamed out at me. The turmeric had coated every single one of the white elastic bands in what can only be described as a shade of highlighter yellow. What a schoolboy.

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My top brace went on today. It was a truly rare occasion: I was actually looking forward to visiting the dentist. Amjam didn’t waste any time in getting down to business; I was given a rather fetching pair of flowery-rimmed goggles to wear and a suction tube was placed under my tongue to keep my teeth dry whilst my teeth were cleaned and the brackets glued to my teeth.

It was neither pleasant or unpleasant: the second-worst moment was when Amjam used a high-pressured water jet to clean my teeth. It was absolutely agony on my back teeth – I definitely felt my eyes mist up on a few occasions during that part of the procedure, and I’m a well-known ice queen.         However, the worst moment was when he cranked the radio up and Justin Beiber was playing. I think my ears hurt more than my mouth.

I was lulled into a false sense of smug security once the brackets went on. They didn’t hurt much and I thought, ‘Everyone else has such a low pain threshold; this is really easy mwahahaha’. He popped the wire on and my smugness dissipated as a huge, strange pressure spread across across my top jaw. OH, MY. THE. PRESSURE.

A few moments later, Amjam came at me with a pair of pliers and I began to fear that I was dealing with some sort of Mafia Orthodontist… I couldn’t possibly owe him money as I hadn’t even been given the chance to pay my first instalment yet! It was okay though, he just wanted to trim the wire. Mind you, I was still praying to all sorts of higher beings for the full minute that those pliers were digging around in the back of my mouth.

Once all was said and done and I was a fully-fledged 26-year-old-teenager, I had to rinse my mouth out with the vile green mouthwash that I encountered when I had my moulds taken. As a rule of thumb, I don’t tend to eat or drink anything that shares a colour pallet with highlighter pens but on this occasion, I was willing to make an exception, especially as I’d sat with my cheeks spread for an hour and my mouth was as dry as Gandhi’s flip flop.

I was given a list of foods to avoid for the duration of wearing my braces (I don’t like Mars Bars anyway) and told to get well acquainted with my electric toothbrush (for regular cleaning, people!) as I would be brushing after every meal now for the duration of my treatment. And so the journey begins. First tightening is scheduled in 6 weeks time.

So here I am with my new teeth bling: