Braces Week 16: Detailing and Hope for the Future!

We are coming to the bitter end, my friends. 

First day, December 11th

April 10th, four months later

Wow. We've come a long way, have we not? :) It's not perfect, but I'm pretty amazed at how much more symmetrical my smile looks. We're trying to tilt in my left front tooth. After we do that, they can come off, baby!  Woot.

I'm a little concerned about the apparent ridge in the middle of my two front teeth. Dr. Watson said it should go away as my tooth tilts in, but if it still looks this way in a few days I think I'll call him back. I've been a little worried about it since my first IPR. I just hate to waste time.  

 When I went in today, he said they looked great. We did a little detailing work, grinding off the ridges on the bottoms of my teeth. He said he was very conservative and if I wanted, he could straighten them out a little more at my next appointment. 

I'm a little nervous for the next few weeks. I'm nervous because I don't know when exactly I'll be getting them off, and my hopes are high for really soon! And because of my upcoming gum graft.:/ And the ridge between my teeth situation. And I'm not sure what the plan is for doing my retainer. Just a lot of little things:) I'm sure everything will be fine, I mean, it's not like I have a lot of control over what my teeth do. That's up to you, Dr. Watson! My dentist did tell my to massage my gums with my toothbrush after I brush them because they were starting to grow towards my braces. I have been, and it's helped. I feel like they are relaxing back into their original position. They've been bigger since about the first week I got braces. So, if your gums are growing towards your braces, I recommend the toothbrush massage! 

Braces Update...and Gums...

Today's images are brought to you by: Non-Focusing Camera!
Seriously, though, it's hard taking pictures of your own mouth...

 I have good news and bad news. First, the good! I should be out of my braces by the end of this month. Woohoo!!! I know I haven't been in them that long, but knowing it was just a quick touch up made me really impatient for them to come off. I need to work on my whole patience thing...

Look how far we've come...

Lookin' good!

You can see a little better in this one, my front teeth aren't quite together yet, we may need a little more IPR and a couple minor tilt adjustments. And then of course a little contouring of the bottoms.

Hopefully, we can take care of these last couple of details at my next appointment and get these puppies off! 

So, now onto the not-so-great news. I need a bone and gum graft.

I know it's fuzzy, but my lower two (especially the right one) front teeth have receding gums and bone.

My lower gums have been hurting for weeks. Turns out my frenulum was just too high and pulling on my gums. It got damaged, and now I have a half-ripped frenulum pulling on my gums. Ouch. I'm super excited to get that fixed. And my periodontist is awwewesome. It's going to be expensive and a little bit of a healing process, but don't worry, I bought some sensitive toothpaste to help get me through. 

Braces Week One

It's been a week, Hallelujah!!!
So, the good news is that my teeth are moving.  They already look straighter to me:)  That makes me really happy.  I just want them to move as fast as possible, I wish there was a way I could speed it up!
One bad news item, I had a bracket fall off on Friday:/  It was on a crown, and they used the regular cement, so they said it was a possibility that it would fall off.
I just covered the wire with some wax and they got me in first thing Monday morning to get it reattached.  This time, the roughed up my crown a little and put special adhesive on.  He told me he would repolish it and everything when the braces come off.
He reattached the arch wire to that side of my mouth and I was on my way in just a few minutes:)

I've gotten to the point just the last couple of days that I haven't been using wax.  I'm sure I'll use it again, but for right now, it feels okay without:)  I've also started eating regular food!  Which is awesome, because I love mashed potatoes and soup...but enough is enough.

I'm really happy to actually be seeing results.  I'm having a hard time being patient:)  He estimated 3-5 months of treatment, I hope it's only 3!  I've read that there's really no way to make it go faster though, the best things I can do is just have really good oral hygiene and stay away from problem foods. So, I will do that and have fun watching my teeth move.

I can tell my right side has come down to form a straight wire line, which is awesome. Also, I thought it might look weird with so much gum on top, but it looks like the tooth has pulled down further out of my gums, exposing more enamel rather than moving the gum down too. (That makes more sense; I don't know why I thought it would happen the other way around.)
My left side is coming down, although not as fast. The little tooth to the side of my big tooth is still pretty crooked, but to me it looks a little straighter.:) My front teeth are becoming less angled.  I can feel it on the back of my teeth, and also the bottoms of the front look straighter. They're still overlapping a touch, but they are definitely moving. The goal of the next few weeks is to get a gap going between my two front teeth. I'm getting a little chapped in both corners of my mouth.

Wednesday, December 11, the day I got my braces on

Wednesday, December 18, one week later

It takes forever to clean my braces.  Especially when I have to spend AT LEAST five minutes every night staring at them trying to see them move;)