Yesterday, I got braces. Orthodontic brackets, plastered to my teeth, hooked together with a wire intended to straighten them out. Yup.
Getting them put on was surprisingly easy. Unlike a dentist’s appointment where they have to reach all over inside your mouth, all the orthodontist needs access to is the front of your teeth—and typically the biggest barrier there is just your lips. So they have this device that pulls your cheeks back (lifting your lips a bit in the process), but you don’t have to hold your mouth open forever—you can pretty much relax with your mouth open an inch or two.
Then they just stick the brackets on your teeth one by one, shine a special light on them to harden the glue, stick the wire up against the brackets and snap’em shut. The only uncomfortable part was before the braces when they wanted to take an impression of the teeth to make a 3-D model of them. (I hope I get to keep that when everything’s done!)
At first it wasn’t painful at all. Since everyone says braces hurt a lot, I figured something was wrong. I felt fine! I was bouncing around, showing everyone at work the new braces. (Disappointed several times because people didn’t even see them from a distance, because they’re the ceramic/clear kind. But close-up they’re pretty obvious.) Lunch, an hour after they were put on, wasn’t painful either—but it was pretty awkward! It felt like half the food was getting stuck in my braces. “Hey, I want to eat that!”
By the evening, though, I started to feel something going on. I told my wife that it felt like someone stirring my brain with a big wooden soup spoon—but from underneath. I guess it’s just the teeth shifting around. But it made me feel weird, almost slightly dizzy. Two teeth in particular felt a bit tender.
Sleeping was the worst part, though. Just as I was about to fall asleep, some weird pain jolted me awake. I think it was my teeth trying to go back to their normal, bizarre clenching pattern I mentioned a while ago, but because of the braces they weren’t able to. I woke up in the middle of the night and my teeth hurt something fierce. I thought (perhaps in a dream) that one of the brackets had come off my tooth (one of the particularly tender ones). By morning, several teeth were in full-fledged pain.
So, I took an Ibuprofen and less than an hour later I felt fine. Yay for drugs! Eating breakfast (right after the Ibuprofen) was still a bit tender, but lunch was no problem. By dinner, though, the drugs had worn off and I had four sensitive teeth now. I tried to chew my peas in the few non-sensitive parts of my mouth, but no cigar—the sensitive teeth would still make contact with the bottom teeth and that was not comfortable at all. I think how my teeth fit together is already changing significantly. Because of the shape of my bottom teeth, it doesn’t take much of a change in the top teeth to make a big difference!
I contented myself with mashed potatoes and gravy (yum!), which didn’t give me any difficulties. I was able to slurp that down pretty easily. But I hope this tenderness doesn’t stay for long. They say the worst is usually over after the first five days or so. I’m already looking at the Ibuprofen bottle to see what the maximum intake is …
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