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.