Metal Mouth Message Board

Hey everyone,

Just thought I'd introduce myself since I have to post within 7 days of joining! I'm 18, from Sydney, and just got braces- ceramic ones on the top, normal metal ones on the bottom.

To the untrained eye, my teeth look relatively normal since my top front teeth are all pretty straight, so I got a lot of comments like "your teeth were fine- why did you get braces?!" which, as I'm sure you know, aren't very helpful. I have a cross-bite and crowding, which I'm told will take about a year and a half to correct.

Most of the pain has subsided, and luckily the scratches in my mouth healed quickly, but it's still hard to eat food, particularly tearing food with my front teeth e.g. sandwiches, rice cakes etc. I'll add photos of my teeth soon.

Thanks for listening everyone, and have a good one!

DW


Note: the reason my top bands are yellow is because I stupidly ate a bright yellow tofu curry on the first day of having them. It was the softest thing available!)

Hi dagwoman

Nice to see another Aussie here!

Good luck with your braces.

G'day dag, from another sydneysider.

Yeah, curry will stain the living daylights out of clear ligs. If you're into other colours, I find silver is quite discreet and will keep its colour far longer.

Good luck with it all.

How come the wire on your top teeth is clear? I have ceramic braces, but I was never given the option of clear wire!

Hey everyone, thought I'd do a quick update!

I had my first adjustment today. I got different colours on the bottom (I wanted purple, but they got confused and gave me lavender- oopsies!) and thicker archwires. That very special looking thing on the top left that looks like a twist tie got stuck in my braces is for new elastics at night. I'm a little sore now, but not too bad.

While the changes in my teeth probably aren't that obvious to others, when I layer my first photo with the most current on my computer and flick between them, the change is so cool.

There is definitely a change there.

The good news about lavender is that no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't stain.

Good luck with the twistie for elastics. I managed to break two of those.

dagwoman wrote: To the untrained eye, my teeth look relatively normal since my top front teeth are all pretty straight, so I got a lot of comments like "your teeth were fine- why did you get braces?!" which, as I'm sure you know, aren't very helpful.

I'm right there with you on this one dagwoman! I've had the same response from everyone I work with. It's so frustrating!

Looking great Dagwoman, I like the lavender.

Hey all,

Just wondering how I'd go about getting this moved to the Braces Stories section, so I can continue to rant about my progress as it happens

dagwoman wrote:Hey everyone,

Just thought I'd introduce myself since I have to post within 7 days of joining! I'm 18, from Sydney, and just got braces- Inspire (clear) ones on the top, normal metal ones on the bottom.


Note: the reason my top bands are yellow is because I stupidly ate a bright yellow tofu curry on the first day of having them. It was the softest thing available!)

I don't think those are the ICE brackets. Nonetheless, your teeth don't look like they need much work. I hope you have a quick journey!

Thanks for moving this thread!

Here's a new photo, taken today. I have a few concerns, though.

Firstly, my upper left lateral and my lower left lateral have been coming in to close the gap in the middle of my mouth, but now my lower is in front of my upper, like I have an underbite, but just on those two teeth!

Also, my upper left lateral is moving further away from my central, making a bigger gap (there wasn't one at all when I first got braces on- it appeared two days after I got them on), and is starting to rotate the wrong way.

I've got my next adjustment soon, so I'll talk to my ortho about this stuff then, as well as the fact that my two upper centrals are uneven, as I mentioned before.



Thanks for reading

Here's an update from yesterday or the day before:



I'm going for my second adjustment tomorrow, so will post another photo then!

[quote="dagwoman"]

To the untrained eye, my teeth look relatively normal since my top front teeth are all pretty straight, so I got a lot of comments like "your teeth were fine- why did you get braces?!" which, as I'm sure you know, aren't very helpful. I have a cross-bite and crowding, which I'm told will take about a year and a half to correct.

I had the SAME issue...everyone kept asking me why I was getting braced when my teeth looked so straight...I also have a cross bite and an open bite so I would have to show them how my teeth don't line up or tell them how my jaw hurts cuz of it ...

Now when people say that i pretty much ignore them..I know I'm doing the right thing for my teeth

Well, just came back from my adjustment!

My ortho seemed surprised that my teeth hadn't shifted to fix the crossbite more, and that there was still a gap at the top, which I guess was a little disappointing. She asked me "are you sure you've been wearing your elastics at night?" and I was ADAMANT that I had been! I've been reeaaally diligent about it.

Anyway, she put some small bends in the top wire to help my two front teeth become even, and put powerchains on the top. Also, she put something on my bottom really crooked tooth (ligature tightener or something?) to help it fix itself up. I got blue ligs on the bottom, too!

Also, now I'll be wearing three elastics at night, instead of two. I asked her if she only wanted me to wear them at night, because I was more than happy to at other times, so she said I could aim for 12 hours a day, which I'm really happy with.

I also mentioned the problem with one of my bottom teeth coming in front of my top one as I've mentioned on here earlier, and she said not to worry about it, that it would fix itself in time. Oh, and she also did some more IPR- what fun!- as well as giving me a new tist tie for my elastics, because the one I had was getting pretty mangled.

Even though she seemed a little surprised about the lack of progress with my top teeth in relation to the bottom, my bottoms ones are really straightening out and all the new stuff she put on them today is making me feel good about it. The only problem is that I'm going overseas and my next adjustment isn't till January 23rd, and I have clear powerchains. So it's not gonna be too pretty by that stage!

Here's a picture:



DW

Wow! The gap's already starting to close and my really crooked bottom tooth is rotating the right way more... Excitement!