Rick's brace odyssey!

[rickr]

Hey,

I'm a 29 year old guy from Manchester, UK who has had fixed braces on my top and bottom teeth for three months. I had my first adjustment yesterday. Thought I'd use this as a little online diary to look back on! Enjoy.

The story so far:

A long tme ago in a town far far away...........(approx 20 miles)

At the age of 12 I was all braced up by my orthodontist, to correct what he described as a potential 'Jimmy Hill Chin' (for the unitiated, Jimmy Hill is a UK ex footballer and sports pundit with a prominent jawline. Google him and you'll see what I mean). From my recollection, the treatment lasted around 1 year and seemed to have me revisiting my orthodontist approximately evert other week to fix another broken wire.

You see, I was a bit of a fidgety child and my spare time (according to my mum) was spent with my fingers in my mouth mucking about with my brace and generally being a nusiance by clicking out bits of wire and clicking them back in again. Apparantly, the final straw came when I pulled the whole wire out, was taken to the orthodontist and he decided he'd had enough of me and decided to discontinue treatment. Probably quite rightly to be honest!

So, fast forward 15 or 16 years and I end up with a semi Jimmy Hill chin with a prominent underbite and a mouth looking like a cow chewing when I speak (my description!). This left me pretty self concious of my jawline, and especially my smile so I mentioned this to my (then) dentist on a couple of occasions. He wasn't particularly helpful.

After moving to another area (20 miles away, remember!) I changed dentists. In my initial consultation I mentioned my issues with my jawline and he was far more helpful, in fact referring me to my local hospital. After a couple of consultations and a fair bit of waiting, I finally got my treatment confirmed, on the good old NHS!

I finally had my braces fitted eventually after 2 years of waiting in July 2007. What I wasn't prepared for was the pain in my teeth after the first wires went on! I think I was the most grumpy person on the planet for about a week afterwards, but luckily the pain settled down after a while and I ended up not realising the braces were there. Which wasn't necessarily a good thing as when my teeth got back to feeling normal, I made the cardinal sin of going back to eating regular food again as before. Big mistake!!

I went to my orthodontist yesterday for my first adjustment and got in a bit of trouble!! Apparantly, my top teeth have moved well, but my bottom teeth not at all. Oops! This is because, unbeknownst to me, one of the gates on my front bottom teeth had come open, and the wire had got a bit mangled at my back left molars which had basically meant that then bottom wire had ended up next to useless.

Obviously a lesson learnt for me as when the pain subsides, I still need to keep an eye on what I eat!

Anyhow, new top and bottom wires on now, a little bit uncomfortable but not as bad as when I first had them put on, and I'm going to be far more careful from now on.

I'll hopefully post some pictures on here in the next couple of days!

Thanks for reading!