I'm a 22 year old female, 23 in two weeks.
I got braces for the first time while I was 17. I've known I needed braces since I was 13. Back then, my treatment time was estimated at 4 years. I had buck teeth from sucking my thumb and a small gap between my two front teeth. My mom couldn't afford braces so I didn't see another orthodontist until 17. I went in for a consultation and left with brackets. Yes, these people put brackets on me and spacers in without informing my mother. She really didn't have much of a choice but to let me keep them so I did. I had four extractions. Two upper and two lower. For two months, I had these braces. I moved across the country and they would not release my records to continue elsewhere without us paying for the remainer of my treatment. $4500 for brackets, one wire change and elastics? No way. We are still in dispute today. My mother actually removed my braces herself using YouTube and I had my general dentist remove the glue. Crazy right?At 18, I joined the Air Force and had a few more consultations but could not afford anything on my own. So I waited until age 22. In these couple of years, my teeth moved into horrible positions due to all of the space I had because of the extractions. My gap was now huge, lots of space between upper teeth and overbite even worse than before. I got tired of waiting for them to get worse so I decided to do a little more research and finally found my awesome orthodontist. He estimated my treatment time at 18 months which is way better than the 2 or 3 years I'd been quoted in other places. I paid my down payment and began treatment the next week.
Fast forward to today and it has been a little over 13 months since I've been braced and I'm right on track. My ortho just gave me the good news that I will def get my braces off by December. I have no more wire changes and I'm waiting for the elastics to finalize my overbite corrections. I'm wearing them all the time. My journey has been a good one. I didn't feel any pain which is really weird. Not even with my thickest closing wire with the loops. Slight discomfort but never anything that I would consider pain and I've been eating everything. Even ribs. I haven't broken any brackets or wires either. So far so good. I'm proud of myself for pulling through and for paying for this all on my own. Sorry for being long winded but as you can tell I'm super excited. I hope everyone else is having a good experience as well. It really helps to note all of the small changes. Good luck to everyone and thanks for reading my story!
