Four months of braces

Wow, four months. It's not exactly flown by, but it's not been too painful. That said, I'll be very glad when I get these braces off for good!

Work has started to get busier, which means I've had more meetings with clients I've not seen for six months or so. I'm astonished that not a single person has commented on my braces. In fact, I don't even catch people looking at my teeth when I'm not looking at them anymore. Maybe I've dropped that gurning that new brace wearers do! I went to one of our other offices three or four weeks ago and was greeted by a secretary who was also wearing braces. I made a throw away comment about us both being brace wearers but I couldn't draw her in. I guess I've broken a really important rule; when you wear braces everyone has to pretend you're not.

I had my latest adjustment appointment on Wednesday. I turned up early, as I normally do, and sat and waited and waited and waited. I could tell from the sounds coming out of the surgery, intermittent noises from the saliva sucking machine, that someone was having a very bad appointment. By the time she came out I was fifty minutes late going in. She came out properly pouty and looking very sorry for herself, doing a Chloe from 24 face (hopefully that means something to you!) When I went in both the orthodontist and nurse were looking utterly drained, I can only think the previous patient hadn't been following the advice given to brace wearers and had knocked off several brackets. My appointment was fairly uneventful. My teeth are generally going what they should be, albeit my molars have gone a bit awry, which may mean having brackets put on my lower wisdom teeth next time. I had a thicker wire put on my top arch, and a thicker, stainless steel wire on the bottom. Again, I had power chain all the way around my lower incisors to keep pulling them back. The adjustment was a bit uncomfortable when pressure was applied to my sorer teeth, but I've learned to take a couple of painkillers before the appointment, which seems to help.

My teeth were sore by the time I came to eat that evening and worse the next day. Who knew that sweetcorn and dried apricots could cause such pain?! However, by the Friday I was pack to eating pretty much anything I wanted again.

The photograph shows that my cross bite is now corrected, it's just a case of continuing to move my teeth to fill the gaps in my lower arch and small adjustments to optimise my top arch. As the orthodontist said, it'll still take several months though. Oh well!

Click here to read about my previous adjustment appointment to see my progress
Click here to read about my next adjustment appointment