is it the weekend yet?!?!

so i guess ive been chewing too much because the left side of my jaw has been bothering me. i ate a chicken cheesesteak from wawa for lunch yesterday by biting into it, so maybe that was it (by the way, why is WHENEVER i get a sandwhich from wawa the 4 numbers after me get called first? this happens every time!). and then today at work i was out in the field and my coworker and i kept picking blueberries and eating them (easy to eat) and chewed on some sort of teagum or something leaves (not so easy to eat but left a really nice taste in your mouth!). i also picked some sphagnum moss to rub on my burning bug bites (which felt soo soo good! seriously they should bag that up and sell it), but thats another medical story.

on a happier note i'm going to ac this weekend with olivia and becky and i'm soo excited!! so i was at the grocery store today getting some everyday things and some snacks and mixers for ac. so...do you know how long it takes to find protien bars that have an edible texture when you have braces and rubber bands? the best thing i could find was luna bars, so i'll let you know how that works. i don't know what a guy with braces would eat if he was looking for some protien bars! they're all too hard or too chewy!

rubber band time...

so whenever anyone would ask me when i was getting my braces off i would just say "i don't know, i'm suppossed to have on for year", but i knew my teeth were moving slow because the orthodontist told me that every time i went there. so, at my june checkup, i finally got up the nerve so say "so, do you think these will be coming off in august (the one year mark), and the girl told me i have a long way to go, and i'll be lucky if i get them off by the new year :-(

so at my july appointment i got rubber bands! ahh. i wonder how many different configurations of rubber bands i'll have this time around (last time it was at least 5). the thing is, i dont' think i wore them all that much when i was a kid, but they're not bothering me that much at all. i even have to keep them in when i eat and its really not that bad! i've already eat starburst, a bagel and a chicken cheesesteak with them in! these are the normal rubber bands that are on both sides and just go from a back bottom molar to a top canine, so they don't get in the way that much, i had some more intersting configurations when i was a kid which were really annoying.




so here are my top teeth, the gaps are almost closed from the extractions!



here is my bite, as you can see there is no more open bite in the front! the problem is my back molars don't touch when i bite down now, and i still have a cross bite. and i don't know if that one front tooth sticks out more, or it just looks like that beacuse the bottom tooth under it is further back.




this is the first time that incisor got tied into a wire! oh speaking of wires, i had to get a new wire on the top this time (not mentioned prior to appointment which means i had no good drugs with me to take!), but anyway, first off i had to get this special wire in TURQUOISE because they didn't have silver, and second off, there's those huge bends in it (made by the orthodontist). the rubber bands hook onto the bend, but i think the forces from that bend will close up the gaps that developed between those two teeth.

so when all this was going on, there actually was a decent looking 20ish male who came on his motorcycle att the othodontist. he was just getting his retainer though, so i guess i really don't have any chance of running into him again at the orthodontist.

6 months with braces...

so my teeth aren't moving as quickly as they should be :-( the gaps are closing up, so I may need to get a new stronger wire put in next time, and I wasn't suppossed to get new wires till June.

And....I asked for the light aqua ligs and the girl put in the dark turquoise! i dont' like having dark colors on the braces!! thank god i only have to have them in till march 31st!

so i don't know if i mentioned i found 2 girls at law school with braces...and one told me about these amazing dental good.

these wax dots are well worth the extra $2 over the regular little white wax rolls. while the you can't really taste the flavors, its nice that its preformed in a little dot so you dont' have to roll your wax up in a ball, and this wax has a much b etter texture, it stays intact longer, and it doesn't fall out or move around when you eat. the colors are pretty obnoxious, so they probably wouldn't look that great if you needed wax on front brackets, but i've only been needing wax on the bands on my molars.

these things are soooo much easier than the threader things to use with regular floss. and i love the wide spongey piece of floss, cause some of my teeth have bigger spaces and there's alot of plaque to wipe off around some of the brackets and it gets the job done alot better than regular floss. whats weird is some of my teeth on the bottom are actually tighter together now, and its even hard to get the regular size floss in between them. my dr's answer was just "hmmm" and i think he said it should all straighten out once the gaps are gone or something....

barrister ball

look at that beautiful arch! and this picture shows the additional bands i got in november

so im not writing in this nearly as much as thought i would but i would at least like to keep record of some photo progress of my teeth. I had my first dentist visit with braces this time around last week and I had no cavities!!! i never had any cavities the first time i had braces but once i was 16 i would have 3-5 every dentist visit!

but anyway the teeth are straightening out nicely except i only got power chains on the bottom in late january to start closing the gaps, which will apparently take a while. ill be going to the ortho every three weeksj from now on to get new chains.

oh and i got pink ligs this time!

power chains

my teeth look more uneven in this picture than they do in real life but that one lower incisor is still all the way back there

so i went to the ortho the day before my birthday to get the broken wire fixed. he ended up not putting in a new wire (yes!) and actually clipped the other side of it in the same spot where it broke on the other side (between the first bicuspid and the big gap) so not only was i not sore, but now i have less places for food to get stuck! I have noticed a little more tooth movement but i really can't wait to have the gaps close up and make room for some other teeth that haven't moved yet.

It will be awhile before i put up any more pics....i have to send my computer in to get the motherboard replaced...ugh.

Pretty excited about going to Washington DC this saturday! and...girls next door premier Sunday...holllaaaaaaaa

bad orthodontic patient...

so my wire broke today, as i bit into an egg salad sandwhich on wheat. i didn't even have anything hard for breakfast, i had oatmeal and a sliced banana! so anyway, first the little clear tube that covers the wire came off and before i could think "what is this" the wire starts flopping around in my mouth! it snapped right after my first bicuspid, infront of the extraction. so since the wire is kinked in the back i couldn't pull forward to get it out, so i had to pull it out the back, which let me tell was extremely difficult since my 2nd molar is jammed up against the back of my mouth. it was especially gross trying to do this with reminents of egg salad still in my mouth...bleh.

so anyway i'm going tuesday to get a new wire.....i hope its not painful for a couple days like when the wire got put it because wednesday is my birthday!!! but in a way i kinda hope i get new wires on the top and bottom so my teeth start moving more, and they really have to do something to start closing up these extraction sites! i have barely any tooth surface to bite down on (because my molars have a cross bite and the front teeth dont' meet because of the open bite) so chewing and biting is pretty uncomfortable, and large pieces of food are constantly getting stuck in the extraction sites.

i def dont' remember braces being this difficult as a child! and to think of it, i really dont' remember running off to brush my teeth every time i ate something as a kid. did having food stuck in my teeth not bother me? and to top it all off, i had ZERO cavities the whole first time i had braces. guarantee i have like 7 next time i go to the dentist, which better not be till 2009 because as horizon informed today i have reached my dental maximum for the year. working for the government full time has such a great benefits package! (just had a $647.80 dental bill for extractions and one filling).

speaking of horizon, i nearly had a heart attack today! i got my orthodontic explination of benefits and it says its covering nothing! now i called up before this ordeal, as did my orthodontists office and they ensured coverage. the lady on the phone told me the claim my ortho sent in was "illegible". yeah...ok. more phone calls tomorrow...yay.

i'm so sick of brushing my teeth!

sorry, its really hard to keep up with a blog while school is going on! while labor day weekend the braces went to AC to meet the girls next door:

kendra


bridget

danielle! the new gf (once i get boobs and the braces off)


so except for places you get carded at the door, i haven't been getting carded with the braces!

in tooth news i feel like my bathroom sink is going to clog with the huge chunks of food i'm constantly spitting out! i like using my smart rinse after i brush and floss though, cause then it tints all the particles/clumps that are left behind and i can brush again!

so i went to an american constitutional society meeting at school the other day (shhh dont' tell anyone...). i went for the free pizza..which brings me to my next point. my good liberal friend alerted me to the fact that there was delicious vegtable pizza there, after i had already grabbed a plain slice. no prob, i just grabbed a veggie piece too (after all the meeting was sparsly attended, see liberalism is out!). so as i'm walking to my seat with the veggie delite, i have a though, which i express to my friend "umm i just realized all theses little chopped up veggies are going to get stuck in my braces" and he just goes "yup" and keeps eating. mm good times. i took out my mirror afterwards and unsurreptitiously picked out the food (after all it was only liberals there) and got the main pieces out. wasn't so bad.

so some of my teeth started moving slightly when i got the wires put it but they've been at a stand still. my two front teeth straighted out but the next tooth over is still very much behind the front tooth. i can't wait to have the gap from my extrations start closing up (after next appointment when ig et the equipment) cause its really hard to chew with them and foot keeps getting stuck back there...ugh.

ahhh

well i got my archwires today and lets just say i finally found an excuse to take some of the percocets i had lying around... i def do not remember it being this painful the first time around. i dont' think we had the thermal wires 10 years ago. i was explaining to my boss how the wires are "stiffened" by your body heat but turn "limp" when cold, and he made some dirty joke about that...it didn't even cross my mind when my ortho was explaining this to me or when i was explaining this to my female coworker. and to make the pain worse i have huge canker sore in my mouth.

yesterday was the first day back at school and i'm pretty sure i'm the only law student with braces. my closer friends were like "hey you got braces" and accquantences just stared at my mouth. i'm hoping my profs will be kind when calling on me since i have braces. if all else fails i can start lisping and spitting alot.

oh again my ortho did not ask if i wanted colors and just started putting the silver/grey ligs on!!! next time i'm saying something as soon as i sit in the chair! i go on 10/23 to get more spaces (my 6's will get banded and i'll get some sort of chains or something to close up the gap fromt he second bicuspids) and then on 11/4 i'm getting more hardware and new wires.

i'm still a bad orthodontic patient

forbidden foods i have eaten since getting my braces on:

sub rolls
bagels
sour patch kids
mambas
potato chips
sun chips
gum
ice cubes
diet coke
diet dr. pepper
gatorade


damn and i was hoping the braces would stop me from eating junk food!

last night i hung out with a bunch of people i haven't seen in a few weeks and no one would mention the braces until i did! and once i said something about having the braces they would be like "they're new right" and then go into a bunch of questions or their own experience with braces. people act like its a huge handicap or something and they can't say anything about it until i do... i think its kinda funny and sad at the same time.

tomorrow = first day at law school with braces!

nothing too exciting going on... oh i did have a slight problem wheni thought i got a piece of chopped peanut stuck in my extration hole, so i started prodding at it so it opened up and was bleeding again and i couldn't get anything out of it, so i just packed it back up with guaze and laid down. i'm still having nightmares about food getting closed up in my extration holes though and my whole mouth getting infected.

my gums have been really itchy but i suppose that means they're just healing well (so i guess no peanut pieces permenantly stuck in my gums). i'm a little nervous to get the rest of my bands put on on tuesday cause i don't know if the gum near the extractions is all that ready to bite on the stick...

an amazing thing happened yesterday though, i ordered a bikini appletini at bahama breeze at lunch and did not get carded! i think they even made it super strong. so much for the braces making me look younger...

i am starving!

i got two more teeth pulled today and let me just say the chicken soup and ice cream is not cutting it! bring on the protien shake with banana for dinner...whoo hoo. also, this morning after my dentist pulled the two teeth he told me to take it easy for the rest of the day...so i went back to work. here's some pics of some highlights of the weekend:


this was on post secret this weekend!


braces and bombs!



braces like holla for a dolla




random girl standing next to me at sawmill, aka my new best friend





i thought it was funny that my one friend needed a cane (broke his fibula) and i have braces!




all in all i didn't really mind being out at bars in braces. i mean no one hit on me or anything, actually wait the big fat bouncer at sawmill did, here's how the convo went (as i was trying to walk out with my friends):


bouncer: you can't leave we need more beautiful women here

me: but i'm not beautiful i have braces (i flash a huge tin grin)

bouncer: i know you had braces the moment you walked in here, you're still beautiful



and on that note we left.

week 1 in braces

i had a huge floss enshnarement on my brackets!! i can't floss and i don't even have a wire in yet! seriously my teeth are just soo crowded, now that there's brackets on them, i don't have room to get the floss in between them. a guy a work had a good suggestion for the time being until my teeth move...toothpicks.







i had to go to my first meeting with braces. there were contractors, business owners, police, utility representatives there... now these are people i see at least once a month, for over a year. no one said anything about the braces, yet everyone was staring! the one contractor always makes sure to get me a pink frosted donut because they're my favorite, so he point it out to me so now i have to eat this pink frosted donut with braces in front of everyone or i'll feel really guilty! so i rip it up into tiny pieces and eat it, then realize i forgot to put my hand mirror in my purse! (i inadvertantly put it in my makeup bag as i was applying mascara at my desk). i will now never be without a mirror in my purse!

yesterday me and the braces went to the beach and as i'm walking down the boardwalk i notice this really cute teenage girl (ok i do realize i sound a little creepy right now) but she was all punky with cute clothes and cute hair and then she starts laughing and she has cute little braces! so it is possible to be cute in braces....if your 15 i guess. then later on i see two not cute chubby boys in braces, and i was thinking thank lord those parents got their kids braces cause they didn't have much else going for them in the looks department (i'm going to hell). sidenote: i walked all the way to the end of the boardwalk which i haven't done in a couple years, i generally jsut stay in the sawmill/beachcomber vicinity now that i'm of legal age, and i saw that they still have stands that do hairwraps! HAIRWRAPS!!! i haven't seen such a things since 1997...the last time i had braces...whoah flashback! i wonder if used to match my hair wraps to my ligs? haha

last night i had pizza (my favorite food ever) and i honestly thought i'd eat alot less of it since i have to cut it up into tiny little pieces, no i ate 3 whole slices (minus crust), one more than usual!

looking forward to my first night at the bar in braces!

pics

so i took my memory card to work to upload since my computer at home doesnt' have a slot. here's some pics of my brackets and extractions! those pics are kinda creppy when you click on them and blow them up. in the third picture you can really see how askew my lower teeth teeth are because one of the incisors is right between the two front teeth. oh and as you can see i got some hooks for elastics...i was hoping i didn't need them this time around, but now that i'm older and wiser and paying for braces myself i'll actually wear them like i'm suppossed to!

i'm still kinda in a little pain, i think its worse today than yesterday....not quite percocet pain though, which is a shame cause i've been waiting for an excuse to take the ones i have lying around! i guess i'll just stick to tylenol and merlot!

extractions!

so i have been wanting to get teeth pulled for awhile, because they are so crowded and no one would do such a things.

so, as my orthodontist is putting on the braces yesterday he realizes "hey there's really not enough room in your mouth for your huge ass teeth, and if we straighten them out with braces it will be unstable. we could put in a permenant retainer but you will eventually need braces again." (for a third effing time! i don't think so!) his first solution was a surgurical procedure with a jaw implant to widen my jaw. i really did not like this idea. thankfully he realized my jaw size to face size proportion is perfect and he does not want to make my jaw bigger, so he decideds to extract teeth! yay. as i suspected, the only solution to permenantly fix my teeth is take some of them out.

so now i have to walk around with the brackets and no wires for a couple weeks. i got two teeth pulled today (i'm getting all my second bicuspids removed) and then went back to work. i took some codine and got a milkshake and it really wasn't bad at all. i feel fine, i just can't eat.

i have some great pics but i lost my cord to upload from my camera :-(. oh i had to go to my old office today and i felt the need to explain to everyone that "i'm getting some dental work done" because everyone looks at the braces but then doesn't say anything! like honestly, i dont' care, just ask!

spacers in!

pic 1: me tongue thrusting

pic 2: lower crowding

pic 3: upper prodruding teeth, namesake "snaggletooth"

so today i am $2717 poorer and have embarked upon my journey with adult braces. i'll start with some background, i had braces on and off for 2 1/2 years between the ages of 11 and 14 as well as a plethora of appliaces (for overbite/deepbite, i remember lip bumper, cantilever appliance and various geometric arrangements of rubber bands). instead of the clear retainer i was promised i would get, i got a big clunky plastic and metal one with a pallette expander in it which had to be widened with a key. needless to say, i somehow managed to lose the top retainer and now my teeth look like shit.

i have a small jaw and big teeth so there is some crowding/overlapping and i also have apparent tounge thrust habit which has pushed out my front teeth (and yes the reason miranda on sex and the city got braces was because of her tounge thrust), a habit of sucking on my bottom lip when i'm relaxing, tired or about to fall asleep, and my wisdom teeth caused some crowding on the lower teeth. above are my before pictures from today (with the blue spacers). i acutally got no warning from the orthodontists office that i was getting my spacers in today so i couldn't even plan one last day of taffy, dots and gum! also, i went to target yesterday in search of a bulk package of freedent gum and could not find any! where do the elderly purchase their gum?

for anyone reading this for considering orthodontics, i'll explain that i went with the full metal braces, the first reason was for cost. the second was i know clear brackets don't stain, but those clear rubber bands do, and i refuse to give up dark beverages. its quite obvious you have braces even if they're clear so that did not seem like a good trade off to me. i didn't really realize my teeth were that crooked until an unflattering picture was taken in 2006. as time went on i started to realize every single picture being taken of my was quite unflattering of my teeth! so when i got my wisdom teeth out a week after i finished my first year of law school i made them take out all 4 (rather than just 2 which they wanted to do) by telling them i was getting orthodontics, so at that point i figured i needed to go through with it.