Well, I’m one day post braces and loving life.  I wore ceramic braces for 2 years and 8 months (to correct a huge overbite) and although I couldn’t wait to get them off, I was dreading the actual removal.  In the last 6 months or so of treatment I had to have a number of brackets repositioned and the pain was terrible.  The only way to describe it is to say it felt like the beginning of an extraction. 

Anyway, every time I’d get one repositioned, I’d have them replace the ceramic bracket with plastic or metal.  It’s funny because, being older, I was so self conscious about wearing braces that getting metal was entirely out of the question but once I felt the pain of having a ceramic bracket removed I was begging for metal.  So back to the removal process – the plastic and the metal brackets came off in a snap.   The metals sort of popped off and the plastics sort of peeled off.  No pain at all.  Then she started on the 10 remaining ceramics.  First she drilled around them to remove any excess glue.  It took a while but apparently that makes them much easier to remove.

Before she started she told me that they have a new tool that removes the ceramics much more efficiently (i.e., they don’t break into pieces).  I was skeptical but, sure enough, all but 2 came right off with no pain at all.  On the two that cracked she had to apply a bit more pressure and did a bit of scraping but it wasn’t bad at all.   The drilling/polishing of the glue took a while and was slightly annoying but wasn’t painful.  All in all I was pleasantly surprised.  In fact, the worst part of the day was getting the bonded retainers (I hate the device that holds your tongue back and your lips open).

I’m finding them to be fairly uncomfortable but I’m told that passes.  My nighttime old fashioned retainers were fine and I didn’t have any problems sleeping with them.  So there it is, the end of my braces.  It was definitely worth it!  Thanks for listening.