waiting

I hate being such a worrier. I'm calling my surgeon's office on Monday to possibly schedule a date (AHHH!!) and to figure out how we continue with appealing the insurance stuff.

If it were a perfect world, I'll schedule the surgery for June 30. It would be perfect (a good few days after the half marathon, but still in June). It'll be around a week and a half after my last day of school (with kids, anyway... I'll have a few teacher meeting days and clean up my classroom days). But I'll be happy with that first week in July (although, it might mean not scheduling the date until April, argh!). I want a date. I want something to look forward to.

My gaps are closing pretty rapidly. My rear molar has stopped rotating the wrong way. My upper jaw continues to surprise me with how wide it is becoming - my smile is so much nicer already! My next orthodontist appointment isn't until the first week of April during my spring break, and I'm really hoping they take off some of this extra metal on my teeth - I am back to brushing 4 or 5 times a day because no matter what I eat, it sticks in the front teeth in those thin criss-crossed little metal wires - even though I've stopped biting into anything with my front teeth. I'll post pictures soon.

Well, thanks to everyone that voted for my friend Kristin's classroom (if you haven't, see the last entry - voting continues until March 8), and I'm thinking of everyone (especially those of you lucky enough to be getting dates!!).

sunshine and straight teeth

It is sunny outside! I went for a nice long run in a t-shirt today with no overjacket, no scarf, no gloves (and didn't get soaked or frozen!)... It was beautiful and very relaxing. Up here in the pacific northwest we tend to lack sunshine, so it's always a great thing to run outside in the spring - tons of other runners are out, people waiting for buses are smiling, and it's a generally positive atmosphere.

My teeth are really moving! My clarinet still feels pretty crooked and just plain off when I play, but it's all worth it -my top braces have been on for almost a year now and my front teeth have continued to be pretty crooked. This is no longer! They are quite straight.

The other amazing braces tidbit this week: My tongue officially fits inside the roof of my mouth. I remember when I first got my initial exam at my orthodontists - he told me that the reason I breathe through my mouth (almost exclusively) is because my tongue has no where to sit up at the top of my mouth, where it's supposed to rest when you breathe through your nose. I have noticed breathing is much easier, and I have started to randomly breathe through my nose! Wahoo! I've spent my entire life trying to stop mouth-breathing - when I was 11, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed, hoping it would help. I got braces as an elementary schooler, a palate expander, headgear, and many sets of complicated rubber bands.

But now it's being fixed! I feel like my mouth has gone from our very first apartment (475 square feet) to our apartment now (950 square feet). I can't wait for after surgery and it moves into a house!!

braceversary

Alright, I tried to be clever after a run and it didn't work. Regardless, my braces anniversary is tomorrow! I think I'll celebrate by eating soup. And more soup. Ooooh... and oatmeal!

A year ago tomorrow morning, I was waking up and late... which ended in only getting half my braces on. While my jaw and teeth were not functional at the time, I never really had a problem with a tight jaw (unless I chewed gum for too long or chewed a big piece of steak), I never got migraines from my jaw, and while it clicked and popped a lot, it didn't really bother me, per se. I decided to get braces because my bottom teeth were so crooked that it affected my clarinet playing (plus, I hated the look of my crooked teeth).

What a year. And what a year ahead of me... Maybe at this time next year we'll be looking at de-bracing dates! Whoa.

Oh... and I decided to do the half-marathon, but I think I'll postpone my surgery into the first full week of July. I'll run, I'll work a bit at Starbucks, I'll chair shop, I'll blend and make soup (blegh) and be nice and prepared. I'm sure that I COULD do it and have surgery two days later, but I want to make sure my body only has to worry about my bones, not the rest of my body, too.

tired of braces

I've been really tired of my braces lately. I'm ticked off that I can't eat all of the yummy holiday candy (between the jaw and the braces, I seem to be out of luck for most of my favorites), I am beyond tired of brushing my teeth, I am sick of fishing out food for hours every time I decide to be brave and bite into something head on, and I am for some reason developing more and more little ulcers in my mouth.

For a while the braces didn't bother me - in fact, for a good six months I barely noticed they were there! But suddenly, in the past month they feel huge in my mouth - almost like when I first got them on. No real pain coming from my teeth, but my lips don't seem to fit around them as well as they used to. And combined with all these random sores inside of my mouth, it's really annoying!!

And I'll probably be in braces for the next Christmas season as well. Sucky.

Now, the goal of this wire was to close some of the gap left by my extraction, and then rotate the teeth and remove some of the crowding. I think my wire's wire got crossed (haha, sorry), and while my gap isn't closing, my teeth are trying to remove crowding and line up like good little soldiers.... but there isn't room! I woke up this morning with some pretty sore front teeth, especially one that leans back into my mouth - it turns out my wire is trying to force that tooth through a space about half it's size... and the bracket is actually pulling itself off the tooth. If you look closely, you can kind of see it.

In another note, I think I'm glad to be teaching middle school through all of this. I will never be able to develop an embarrassing braces habit (like picking at them with my tongue in public, like I hear is common) because every time I do something slightly out of the ordinary, my kids call me on. Today: "Hey! Hey Mrs. S! Why do you keep poking your braces out of your bottom lip?" I paused, and realized I was doing it unconsciously. This morning during first period they caught me picking banana out of my braces.

It's too bad my orthodontist is out of town. I'm off to take the braces dancing in Salt Lake City this weekend.... It's their big swing dancing debut!

Thanks for all of your well-wishes and support! Have a great weekend!

braces (halfway)

I have my bottom braces on! The past week, I've had nightmares about missing my appointment somehow, and then on Monday morning Nick woke up at 10am... my alarm hadn't gone off! And my appointment was a half hour away at.... 10am. I've never once been late to an appointment of any kind - not kidding. I'm a get-there-twenty-minutes-early-just-in-case kind of gal, not a shoot from the hip get there whenever kind of gal.

But, everything worked out fine - my bottom teeth are going to take 6-7 months longer than my uppers (half of the time!), and he said there isn't really a reason to have my uppers on yet, in fact, that I could wait a considerable amount of time before getting them on. (However, I want them on NOW so convinced him to let me get them on at my next appointment, March 31st).

Other than being more disappointed in myself than you can BELIEVE, I'm doing great! The teeth are tender, but my lip is holding up well (all those years of clarinet playing, I'm sure). Eating isn't a problem, as I'm STILL crazy sick and can't hold anything down, so I don't really eat. (No worries, I'm back to the doctor this afternoon).

I can't wait to watch all the progress. He said that with this archwire, they're trying to shrink the gap, un-rotate my teeth, and eliminate some of the crowding up front. Sheesh!

On a final note, does anyone out there gave the Damon Braces system? And if so, is it weird that my orthodontist is allowing me to cut my own archwire when it starts to poke out the back? It sounds weird to me, but I'm not complaining.

getting closer...

I'm ten days away from braces, and can I just say I'm scared? I've spent the past three days at home sick from the crazy side-effects from the antibiotics (but I just took my last dose, hurray!), and I've really been reading up on other people's experiences, on studies, on everything I can get my hands on....

And, is it completely vain that I'm getting my hair re-highlighted the weekend before my braces go on? It's been a few years since I was blonde, but I don't think I can face braces along with glasses and muddy brown hair.

Yah, I'm vain. So what? :)

final verdict

The final verdict is in.... (drumroll, please?)

• Bilateral Saggital Osteotomy (lower jaw)
• Horizontal Maxillary Osteotomy (upper jaw)
• Segmental Maxillary Osteotomy (upper jaw)
• Genioplasty Osteotomy (chin)

The surgeon tells me that I had a difficult jaw/face/teeth to work out. There were many options, but the best seems to be they are going to do all of the surgery at once, instead of doing the SARPE. They will try to widen my palate as much as possible with the Damon Braces, and then finish up the job when I go into my jaw surgery. They are pulling two teeth out of my lower jaw for expansion and crowding, and will try to expand that as well with the Damon system.

Worst case scenario? I end up having to have separate surgeries and do the SARPE thing, and they have to also widen my lower jaw during the "main" surgery. She said she was 99.99% sure this wasn't happen.

I should be in braces about a year and a half (which works out perfectly, as I should be getting braces next month and I'll be able to get it during the summer), and then the surgery will happen. Altogether, somewhere around June of 2010 I should be all finished??

I have my final braces "sign-the-paperwork" appointment on Thursday morning.... I'm so excited!

The beginning!

I had braces when I was younger.... elementary school and middle school I did spacers, braces, headgear, bands, the whole bit. I didn't wear my first retainer after my braces came off, so I was stuck in them again for a few more months to refine. The orthodontist didn't trust me after the first round, so he put in a 'permanent' retainer, only to have it fall out a year and a half later, and we didn't have it put back in because my teeth were staying. Four wisdom teeth coming in later, and I have crooked teeth (more crooked than before?) once again.

I've been wanting to get back into braces for a few years now, but haven't had the insurance or the money. Finally, I'm out of school, my husband and I are both working great jobs, and I have insurance! So, I do research online, decide on the Damon Braces system, and make my appointment.

It was last Friday. At the appointment, I was informed that I needed orthognathic surgery on my upper jaw, possibly my lower jaw, and that my upper palate needed to be widened, as it's just barely half of the width it should be.

I am frankly scared of all this, though am gung-ho. I want my teeth to stop getting in the way of my clarinet playing. I want to stop being a mouth-breather. I am ready for straight teeth (and a straight jaw, apparantly).

My appt. with the oral surgeon is on the 11th of this month. I have a final "sign-the-paperwork-here's-your-treatment-plan-pay-us-now" meeting with the orthodontist on the 20th, and then I get braces on January 21st.

I'm scared, but excited.