THEY ARE OFF!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, can you tell I'm excited??? Pictures first, since that's what I always look for, then the story!

In my car right after leaving the ortho!

Front view of the "NAKED" teeth!!!


Profile. It's hard NOT to smile today!



Close up of the bite

If you look closely, you can see a wire cemented to my teeth so that the gap doesn't fill in before I have a change to get the post and implant put in.

Ok, now for the story! I had a few concerns going into today. I was TRYING not to let myself get too excited about getting the braces off, but I knew that if they stayed on I would have been SOOO disappointed. But they weren't coming off until they were as close to perfect as they can get.

So I get to the ortho and managed to not tell anyone that they were coming off today except my husband. Boy, that was HARD. The hardest was probably my friend Rachel. If you watch Grey's Anatomy, well, Rachel's my "person". One of our friend's husband described Rachel and me as Meridith and Christina, and her as Izzy. Not our personalities, but you can't separate Rach and I! If you remember the post about my best friend and her absolutely adorable get well gift (one gift a day for 14 days)... well, that's my Rach!!!

Ok, so anyway... My ortho has a new ortho that just joined his practice. I bet as soon as the weather gets nice, he will be gone! I can't say I blame him. So I tell him that I want to ask him a few questions before we get to taking these braces off. I asked him about the "black triangle" between the two front teeth. He looked at it and explained that it's just the way my teeth are shaped. The only way to fix it would be to shave off the two front teeth where they meet to make them flat and then move them together. He would do it if I wanted him to. But it's not that bad, and I REALLY don't want to have my teeth shaved unless it's really necessary. I had to point it out to my husband, and he's known me for over 6 years and never noticed it, so I decided to leave it. My back teeth ARE meeting properly. I'm just not use to them actually touching, so I wanted to make sure. And as far as my right eye tooth coming out a little more, it's perfectly lined up with the rest. It's just in my head. And when he showed it to me, they are lined up. It might just be that my midlines aren't PERFECT, pretty close, just not dead on.

So now that fun starts! Time to get these suckers off. I really don't remember ANY pain or discomfort from the first time my braces were taken off. I think that the lower teeth were just amplified since I'm still getting feeling back and where I do have feeling it's SUPER sensitive. The part that hurt the worst were the bands... but that's to be expected. The one that REALLY hurt was the one I was afraid of. When I had braces the first time, they were on for over 4 years and under one of the bands was a HUGE cavity. Food got between the tooth and the band and there was NO way to know it was in there until it came off. So that tooth has a rather large filling and is REALLY sensitive. But the other bands didn't hurt nearly as bad.

So off to the sink to rinse. I was scared to look. I was SOOOO afraid of my teeth being stained and having these big white spots in the middle of each tooth where the bracket was. I'm a big coffee and tea drinker. I do try to use a straw when possible, but who knows if that actually helps. Well, to my surprise, there weren't BIG white spots! YEAH. Now came the FUN part (can you hear my sarcasm?). The scraping off of the cermet. I have very porous teeth, which is good for keeping the brackets on... not so good for getting the glue off. After about 10 minutes of scraping, and scraping, and scraping (which on the lower teeth felt like they were going to pop right out of my head), they decided to have the new ortho take the "drill" like tool to get it off. Man, that was SOOO much faster. Within 10 more minutes, it was ALL gone. The only part that wasn't good was the SMELL. YUCK. And I had dust all over my face. But then it was done.

So off to the sink yet once again to rinse. Next the new ortho says that he's going to FILE my teeth. The look on my face must have been priceless because he instantly said "Don't worry, it won't hurt." I tell him that I'm not worried about it hurting, I just don't want him to file my teeth and then my teeth be more likely to get cavities. He assured me that what he was doing was just what nature never did for me. You know how when teeth cut though they are jagged? Well, since I didn't use mine properly, some of those "jaggs" were still there. So he was just going to take them off, especially since the two upper eye teeth are slightly shorter, they will never get warn down on there own. So after that I decided to let him "file" my teeth. I still don't like that word, but he did offer to do my nails when he was done!!! (ok, so it was the assistant that said it, but it made me laugh, so that's all good!)

Off to the sink to rinse again! Now's time for the impressions for my retainers that I get on Wednesday. Since I'm only 3 months post op, I still can't open that wide. I can get about 2 fingers width, but that's REALLY stretching it. So she finds the smallest molds that will fit my teeth. The top one is first. Not too bad, other then not being able to breath. I'm a mouth breather because I have a deviated septum, so I HATE impressions. But the top one was pretty uneventful. Not so for the bottom. She had a hard time getting the mold in there without any "goop" in it. Yeah, that was a stretch to get that in once the "goop" was in place. So she holds it in place, and she kept pushing on the front of my lower lip to make sure the "goop" was all in place. Now that area is still SENSITIVE, so that hurt like HE-L. But if I thought that hurt, it was NOTHING compared to trying to get it OUT of my mouth. I literal had to use my hands to try to open my jaw further to get that thing out. I really don't know how the impression came out, but I'm sure it was awful since she had to do it at the weirdest angle since I just COULDN'T open any more. But it was done, so I was happy. So off to rinse and brush YET again!

Now that all of the glue is off and my teeth are all smooth, what do they do next? That's right, put MORE glue and MORE metal in my mouth. Man, just when I think it's all out, they put some more in. One of my lower right molars was pulled before the braces went on because of a root canal that was still bothering me. This new wire will insure that the teeth don't try to move closer to each other. This wire will stay in there when I get the stud and until the implant goes in. I already have some bone loss there, so they want to make sure that the space stays. For some reason the wire just didn't want to stick to my tooth. Probably from too much brushing in the last 60 minutes. The glue would stick, just not the wire. But they FINALLY got it to stay. Then... you guessed it... off to rinse again!

So that was my day at the ortho! I get to go back on Wednesday for my Essex retainers. The lower one will have to be cut because of the missing tooth, and they will give me a new one once I have the implant in place. The ortho did give me a little goodie "cup". I say cup because it's a travel coffee mug with lots of GOODIES in it! There is some candy, a Blow Pop and some laughy taffy! All stuff that I couldn't eat when the braces were on. Ok, I should say all stuff that I wasn't SUPPOSE to eat when the braces were on. But gum, man I haven't had that in over 10 years. I may have to give it a try. But not today. My jaw is KILLING me. It is actually giving me a headache from all of the stretching today.

I'll post again on Wednesday to let you know how the retainers go. (ok, maybe Thursday since Wednesday is volleyball night. No, I am not playing :( I have to wait until I am 6 months post-op, so I just go cheer them on and have bar food and beer before the game. Yeah, we drink BEFORE our games. It makes it more fun. We are told a lot that we are a fun team to play against. But that may just be because we usually loss) They told me today that I only have to wear them 24/7 for 10 days, then just at night. But I think that I will probably wear them longer then 10 days because I will be sacred that they will move back.

Until then...