It's taken 14 months....

.... and I finally get some elastics.

In other news, today is my 14-month braces anniversary! Yay!

I was wondering when the elastics would come along.... well today they did. I didn't know that I have to take them out every time I eat, and this is not good because I am someone who likes to eat! Nevermind, I am sure I can deal with it.

Anyway, adjustment was good. Moved up another wire on the top, got a power-chain that goes alllllllllll the way around:

And here's one of the elastic:

And I also got a copy of my x-ray from last time!

See the comparison to pre-braces:

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

And here's another comparison:

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

Some bad news...

So you know how I was all worried about revealing my date of surgery? I rang my surgeons practice last week to book my first pre-surgery appointment (which has to be 5 weeks before surgery) and they shared the bad news with me. Unfortunately my surgeon has been in a skiing accident, so bad that he had to have surgery. I believe he is still in hospital as we speak.

He will most likely be better by the time my surgery date rolls around, 23rd of September, however he will probably still be catching up on all of the surgeries he will have missed out on. At the hospital I am going through, he only does one surgery per month so there will be at least one that he has missed.

I am not too worried though, the 23rd September is right in the middle of uni for me so hopefully if it gets pushed back it gets pushed back past uni and past exams so I can recover without having to worry about all the work I'm missing out on! And maybe it will mean less time in braces afterwards :)

My next adjustment is July 30th so hopefully they will have more information by then! Wish me luck!

Oh and as a side note, I turned 22 on the weekend :) Happy birthday to me!

Yet Another Adjustment

Hello all,

So today I had another visit with Dr. P. It's the first adjustment since my second meeting with the surgeon (which was highly uneventful, ended up just signing some paperwork and having some x-rays. Okay the x-rays were quite exciting). Though he was a bit more clear about what he wants done before surgery, in particular the movement of the lateral incisors.

I created a picture (in paint, woo!) of how I understand it:

So the red lines indicate where the surgeon wants to cut so he can move the front section down and close my open bite. However the lateral incisors seem to be a bit tilted side-ways and the roots are in the way of the cutting path. Dr. P's approach was to break off the brackets on the lateral incisors and re-position them on an angle. This means that when the arch wire is put back on, the teeth would want to move in the direction of the yellow arrows. The problem with this is basic physics - the tooth wants to rotate around it's centre of gravity (being approx where the purple dot is) the root rotating in the direction of the orange arrow. This is not ideal as it doesn't really solve the problem of creating a space for the surgeon to cut.

The solution is to whack a wire (shown in grey) around the front four teeth to keep them together, thereby moving the centre of rotation down to where the bracket is attached to the tooth. The parts of the teeth that show stay where they are, while the roots rotate in and out of the way:

Resulting in lot's of room for the surgeon to chop chop chop away:

Here is a photo of the funky wire configuration (that sits behind the arch wire):

And a photo to illustrate the rotated bracket and resulting curved wire (shown by the green arrow and red lines):

The blue arrow is showing the gap that has already appeared since this morning...

As you can imagine, they are pretty sore. But nothing I haven't dealt with before! :)

I Have A Date! ... For Surgery ;)

I actually met with the surgeon on April 9th... On that appointment I also had spacers put in, and then metal bands on the back teeth put on a week later on April 15th. I had another adjustment a few days ago on May 21st. My updating has been a little slack, sorry.. :P

I'll talk about my meeting with the surgeon later, for now I'll talk about my last adjustment.

I moved up a wire size on the top and am now on a square wire. The bottom is still on the circular wire, but the last one :) I'll go up to square at my next appointment. Dr. P. was saying that there is two grades of square wires to go through... but a friend of mine who also has braces says that his orthodontist says there is only one. So we'll see what happens. Either way I am almost there!!

And here are some more creepy photos...

Once I have moved up to the highest wire grade, Dr. P. will start moving my top teeth around to centre my midline. Everything is pretty straight though which I'm happy with :D

My second premolar on the bottom left has had to have another wire ligature and power chain put on to try and get rid of the rotation. This has happened previously but hopefully it behaves itself this time. It has been causing me a bit of trouble, it's been quite painful to eat on and I've been using my other side mainly. You can see the fancy set-up in the second to last photo above.

As you can see the second lot of metal bands have been put on my very back teeth. This has been quite an adventure.... During the first week they were on they made absolute mince-meat of the inside of my cheeks, dental wax wasn't much use unfortunately. That combined with the pain of having all four molars moving was not particularly pleasant. But I survived! It didn't hinder my eating for much longer than normal, only a few days.

And now for the exciting bit.... MEETING THE SURGEON!!

Hopefully I haven't forgotten all of it... it was more than a month ago. That'll teach me for not updating my blog. I'll refer to the surgeon as Dr. W. in my posts from now on.

I had been warned by Dr. P. that he was a little strange and might take a bit of getting used to. However I didn't find this the case at all. We were kept waiting for at least an hour in the waiting room as he was taking longer with his earlier patients, but this seems to me to be a good sign as he doesn't obviously rush things and likes to take his time doing consultations properly!

Once my time finally came around, Dr. W. asked me a couple of questions - including getting me to say a sentence which had lots of s words in it! Thanks lisp! He also spent about 15 minutes measuring every aspect of my face I could possibly imagine. Then he told me his plan.

His proposed plan is to do surgery on both jaws. The bottom jaw will be moved back, I am not sure of the exact measurements but hopefully I'll get them with the surgery plan that's coming in the mail. My top jaw will be getting moved forward and down to meet my top jaw correctly (using the Le Fort Osteotomy I believe). He also says there is a possibility of needing my top jaw widened, which will also be carried out in the same procedure. I think this involved splitting my jaw down the centre which seems pretty scary. If that happens then I'm pretty sure my maxilla will be split into at least 3 pieces.... He says there is also the possibility I will need a bone graft, which would be taken from my hip.

So overall a pretty intense meeting you could say.

I have also been given a surgery date! I'm not going to give the exact day because I don't want to jinx it.. though I'm pretty sure I already have by telling everyone I know. Haha. It's closer than I thought it would be - later this year so pretty soon! It's going to mess with uni a bit but I'll just have to deal with that when it comes. I am just SO EXCITED!!!!

So for now I am focussing on getting good grades at uni, and also on getting fit and healthy for my surgery so I can recover as quickly as I possibly can! Wish me luck! My next adjustment is on June 25th :)

A Small Milestone

Here is a photo of a friend and I at said friend's 21st:

I'm SMILING. FULLY. IN A PHOTO. WILLINGLY. AND I LIKE THE PHOTO.

I think this is the first time this has ever happened!

:D

Comparisons

Hello! Long time, no see. I have been procrastinating doing a new post... but here I finally am. With some comparison photos.

I think that I have had one adjustment since my last post, everything went fine, I just moved up another wire gauge on the top. No fancy rubber fittings or springs this time! The adjustment before that one was the most painful by far, it took about 2-3 weeks to get back to normal. Every time I drank something I would get shooting pains up into my gums around that top lateral incisor that has been getting pulled forward into line. But it ended up getting better and here we are today. :)

So, photos! I finally got around to getting my photos from my old laptop, and have put together a comparison:

I can't believe how much they have changed! I know in my last post I was complaining about how it hardly seems like they have moved at all, but here is the proof they have. I am so happy!

Already I am beginning to feel more confident, I always new I was self conscious about my teeth but I never realised how badly they were affecting my self-esteem. I feel a lot more comfortable smiling around people now and not afraid of showing my teeth. Who knows, I may feel okay smiling for photos soon! But let's not get ahead of ourselves :P

More exciting news - I am meeting with the surgeon on the 9th April!

This will be to discuss the surgery, ask him questions, and I'm guessing for him to actually get an idea of what he's dealing with. I AM SO EXCITED!!

A Long-awaited Update

I have had two adjustments since I last posted, and I am due for my next one tomorrow. When I look at my teeth in the mirror it looks like they have moved so much but when I look at the photos it feels like they have hardly moved at all! When I recover all of my photos from my old computer I will do some comparison photos.

At the last adjustment the 2nd incisor that has been left out was finally attached to the wire! It has moved into the gap quite a lot, which you can see in this photo:

As you can also see from the photo, the gaps left by the extracted teeth have continued to close. This is especially true for the one on the right. However they all still need to move around to the left quite a bit as my centreline is still nowhere near the centre.

And here is the bottom:

The rotation in the front incisor is almost out, and then the only other things that will need to be done are the canine rotation and just generally straightening. 

For the front view:

I've also noticed that my bottom jaw tends to be tilted on an angle when compared to the top... I'm hoping it's not and that it just appears that way at the moment.

I've hit the 6 month mark! This means I (hopefully) only have 12 months to go before surgery :D

As for what has been happening in life in general? I have passed (mostly) my third year of engineering, so am heading into my fourth and final year. This is both exciting and terrifying... I have started my work experience for the summer working at Valspar Paint NZ which is awesome, I really enjoy it! I have had my car stolen twice, and our house got broken into and my laptop stolen. So overall it's been a rather exciting few months!

I will try and update within the next few weeks, I have noticed that it takes about a week before the teeth have moved completely after adjustment.