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.