indessed roscivs

Today I got my braces adjusted for the first time. I say “adjusted” because that’s what I’ve always heard people call it, but I think because my braces are “self-ligating”, it means they actually don’t have to be adjusted. All they did was take out the old wire (which involved them pushing lightly on the brace on each tooth to snap the “door” open, then taking the wire out) and put in a new wire (the same process in reverse).

The assistant asked if I wanted to brush or floss while the wire was out. I wasn’t expecting that. “Is that, um, normal?” I asked. “Yeah, it just makes it a lot easier to brush without the wire in. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“Oh,” I said. “I guess I don’t really care.” I figure one special brushing every seven weeks isn’t going to really make that much of a difference in my dental hygiene. I’ll probably try it next time just for the experience, but it just seemed weird this time since I wasn’t expecting it. The assistant happily put the new wires in and that was that.

I had to wait for a while for the actual orthodontist; she was busy pulling the braces off another patient’s teeth. Oh, how I long for that day! Straightened teeth and no more wires! But, unfortunately, that’s still several years away for me.

Once the orthodontist came over, she poked at my teeth, checked out my bite, and that was about it. All in all the visit took about half an hour! She did say that there was little chance of my top teeth moving out of the way enough to get braces on the bottom teeth. So, as I had feared, they’ll probably have to put spacers on my molars while the bottom teeth straighten out. She said she won’t do that for at least another couple of months, though, but once they’re on they’ll be on for four to six months most likely. I’m not looking forward to that.

After work, I played Go at Uwajimaya for the first time since last October. Not only was it the first time playing at Uwajimaya since then, I haven’t played Go at all—not even online—since then. Surprisingly I wasn’t too rusty, but I only played a pair of 13×13 handicap games. I won by exactly three points both times. I hope I can play again next week, maybe even on a full size board!

今月歯の矯正に行きました。８週間毎に矯正歯科に行かないといけませんけど仕事場の近くにありましていいです。最初に軟らかい食物だったら食べられます、じゃがいもやスープやパスタや大丈夫です。今は百味を食べられますでも軟らかい物の方がいいです。最初に歯痛ありませんでしたでも第２、３日歯痛ありました。今は大丈夫です。歯軋りから歯の矯正行って今はまた少し歯軋りで方がいいなります。

(click here for kanji rollover translations)

Since getting braces, I’ve been dreaming nearly every night. As you know, this is somewhat unusual for me. Does this mean I’m getting better sleep, entering the deep, restful REM sleep more often? Or does this mean I’m getting worse sleep, waking up more often during the night and therefore simply remembering my dreams more often? I’m not sure.

I do know the first two nights after I got braces, I woke up two hours earlier than normal, completely refreshed as if I’d had the best night of sleep ever, and I don’t think I ground my teeth. But the third night was the beginning of the roscivs household stomach flu, so I didn’t get an uninterrupted night of sleep for nearly a week. I’m almost completely recovered now, but I’m back to waking up the normal time with the normal rested, but tired feeling.

I think I’m back to grinding (or really, clenching) my teeth again at night, too. Maybe just because my body is more accustomed to braces now? Several nights ago I even had a dream where my teeth fell out. It wasn’t quite the same as my usual old dreams—normally they fall out one-by-one, and from the roots, i.e. the entire tooth comes out whole.

In this dream, however, the first tooth fell out by itself as normal, but it was only the top part of the tooth. In fact, in the dream, it was as if the tooth was made in two parts: an empty root, and a crown of the tooth like a peg, fitting into the square hole of the root. After the first tooth, the entire bottom-right set fell out together, all attached, like they weren’t individual teeth at all, but rather a string of teeth, again all crowns, pushed tight-fitting into the holes below.

Maybe Deck was right—maybe these dreams are connected to my temporal mandibular difficulties.

I know, I know … all I ever write about these days are me and my braces. “What a boring blog, roscivs,” I can hear you all say. “Where are the endless discussions of the nuances of copyright? Where are the random riffs on economics? Where are the random yet interesting youtube videos?”

Well, those things have taken a back seat in my life to braces. (But fear not, interesting linguistical tidbits will be found in this braces-related post nonetheless.) Fortunately, not everything in my life has been replaced by a fixation on braces. In fact, my eating habits have nearly returned to normal. This last week I started eating english muffins again, and yesterday I even ate a hamburger! Carefully, I admit, and with no bacon or pickles, but I successfully chewed through a hamburger and fries with no pain or discomfort whatsoever. Normality ensues!

In my Japanese conversation exchange last week, I learned all sorts of braces-related words, like “teeth”, “braces”, “dentist”, “orthodontist”—and a very interesting Japanese word, “歯軋り”, or ha-gi-shi-ri. It means, according to my dictionary, “involuntary nocturnal tooth grinding”.

My conversation partner asked me to explain why I got braces. In English, the explanation is a little lengthy. “Well, my teeth interfere with each other, and so I grind my teeth at night, which causes problems, so I figured if I got my teeth straightened out it would help with that.”

In Japanese, the sentence is basically, “ha-gi-shi-ri-de-su”. Because of involuntary nocturnal tooth grinding. How convenient! The Japanese have a word for it indeed!

Shades of Sapir-Whorf, eh? Does language alter the way we think? Are Japanese people more easily able to express these sorts of concepts because of the way their language is shaped?

As I’ve discussed many times, I think the causal chain is reversed—it is because the Japanese more often discuss these sorts of concepts that they’ve shaped their language in such a way that makes it easy. (My conversation partner hypothesized that this is because Americans are able to release their stress in ways other than gnashing of the teeth, whereas the Japanese tend to keep their stress bottled up inside. I can’t speak to the accuracy of this theory, but it seems interesting.)

In support of the “culture-shapes-language, not vice-versa” argument, I present to you the word bruxism. If I’m not mistaken, it is a word nearly identical in meaning to 歯軋り. So, in theory, my English explanation could be just as succint as my Japanese explanation. Why did you get braces? “Oh, because of bruxism.”

But most people wouldn’t understand what I was saying. They either wouldn’t recognize the word, or wouldn’t recognize the further context that such a statement implied (e.g. the other medical problems that such a condition causes). Why is that? Why would a Japanese person understand a wealth of information behind the word 歯軋り, but not an American with bruxism? It’s not because there’s something lacking in the language. The word is there, ready to be used. The difference is in the culture, in how often the word is used, and in what contexts the word is used. If suddenly it became an important concept culturally, the English language would be fully “prepared to do its work” in conveying those ideas clearly and succinctly.

The day after was the worst in terms of pain. The next day I still took an Ibuprofen from the pain in the morning, but it wasn’t nearly as bad. I’m not sure if that’s because I was accustomed to it or what. I also had soup for lunch, rather than the more ambitious soft-ish foods I’d tried the previous two days. I’m sure that helped as well.

Yesterday, though, I didn’t need any drugs—the pain was pretty much gone. When I chew, there are still a few sensitive teeth, but anything mushy I can get down pretty easily. I even ate some potato chips last night! I needed something crunchy. And I figured they were very unlikely to do any damage to the braces. It worked out pretty well!

At home I’ve mostly been eating eggs and mashed potatoes—both of which I love, which makes it easy. Hopefully I’ll be able to move to something a little more solid soon, though. I feel like my teeth have stopped shifting around for the moment (even though I can’t see any visible progress). But it’s only been a few days. Here’s what I look like now!

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 …