The Stupendous Braces Blog

Yup, I'm up at 4 am but the pain is manageable. Even though it seems like it isn't (especially since I'm up this early), it is. My pain moves in wavelengths. It starts off as a dull pain and then when it crests the pain tends to shoot and then it goes back down to the dull pain. I visualize it as my teeth have shifted and are settling into their new space, then they start to move some more (the sharp pain) and then they start to settle and the cycle begins all over again. I actually fell asleep until a sharp pain woke me up.

The sharp pain came from the one tooth that fell down into the space that was left from a previously extracted tooth. Think of this problem tooth as Yoko Ono and the rest of my teeth as the Beatles and you get the picture. Most of the shooting pain comes from Yoko.

Another thing that annoys me is that I have to sleep on my back because if I sleep on my side, the gravity makes the pain worse. I'm supposed to have a dressage lesson later on today, but I will cancel if the meds don't work because there is no way in hell I am going to do a sitting trot with angry teeth.

I don't know if I am delusional or what, but I swear that some of my teeth have visibly shifted. When I look in the mirror, the crowding on the bottom looks straighter (the crowding on the bottom lessened up after I had a tooth pulled), but the top looks a bit more crooked because the teeth up there have nowhere to go. So naturally, Yoko belongs to the top teeth.

So what am I doing for pain until I can get my hands on a painkiller? SALTWATER RINSES!! Actually I'm not always using a saltwater rinse, sometimes I just get some hot water (as hot as I can stand) and rinse my mouth out and then massage my gums. That helps a lot, the only problem is that it doesn't last nearly as long as it should. Another interesting thing that I noticed when I massage my gums is that I can feel the teeth above the gumline shift. So yes, the spacers definitely move things pretty quickly.

Well, it is almost 5 am here and I feel like I can go back to sleep again. Thanks for reading! (Especially if you aren't my mom.)