Most of my story is typical like so many others I've read about.

Raised by a widowed mom with 5 kids was almost impossible now that I think back. My extreme fear of dentist began when I was around 11 yrs old when my mom took me to see an orthodontist. This was one of those huge clinics, I believe it was a school. Well when I got to see the orthodontist, several assistants stopped what they were doing just to go take a peek at my mouth. The ortho was not very nice and made pretty scary comments in front of me an 11 yr old kid! Once they gave her a price she realized that she could not afford to get them for me. After that I just lived my life being teased at school and even some kids at our church were pretty mean. The last thing I wanted to do was bring attention to my situation so I never told anyone.

I stopped going to the dentist for many years. In fact it was at around 20 yrs later that I stepped inside a dentist office .This was when I had to take my own daughter to get a Orthodontic consultation. My husband must have had a feeling because out of the blue he asked me if I wanted to get braces along with my daughter. I froze up but knew the answer was YES!!! I finally made an appointment for myself and didn't sleep for a week before my appointment. I was a bag of nerves. I was very, very surprised to find out that people in the dental industry have really changed their attitudes towards patients.

The orthodontist, his assistant and receptionist were all extremely nice and really understood my fears and helped me out tremendously. I got braces on my upper teeth 24 hours ago. I have the tightness and some tenderness as expected. I still can't believe that I have them on. To many people, the the tenderness and tightness freaks them out but I have a positive attitude about it. The way I see it, any discomfort means that there is progress being made at that moment. I only wish that more dentists and orthodontists would change part of their advertisements and let people know that there is no case that they can't help you with. Dentists and Orthodontists have seen it all. I  thought I was the absolute worst case and I was happy to find out I was very wrong.

My time in braces is estimated at 30 months. I am working on fixing some problems with my lower teeth like a filling and a deep cleaning before I get the bottoms started on. Thank you for this site. I would have to say that 80% of my courage came from all the support and stories I read on the Metal Mouth Forum.