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Aloha all!!

Wow, what a great appointment I had this morning! My ortho decided to be a “Chatty Cathy” (pun intended) today, and was cracking jokes right and left. Great day for questions! :lol: It's like he was in my head all this time, and answered all the questions I wanted to ask before I could even ask them. I honestly have nothing more to ask him about.

Good thing #1: He noticed that my upper central incisors overlapped (which I’ve noticed forever, but never had the ...

AND THE WORST…PAIN…EVAH!!!

Sorry for the mini-vent/rant ahead; I just have to let it out…

Well, the day I’ve been both hoping for (and dreading, at the same time) has come to be. The dreaded ZIGZAG ELASTICS are here!! He sprung these on me with no warning, whatsoever. I heard him mumble something about “finishing…” He had the assistant put 2 more hooks on the bottom (for a grand total of 6 now), and she proceeded to give me a new bag of elastics. They were 3/8”, 6 ...

I promise I'll make this short, as I'm a bit crabby today because my ortho was a crab, too, and I didn't get to ask him all the questions I'd hoped because he was giving me attitude.

My Class II elastics really over-corrected this past month, and my uppers and lowers were clashing like crazy. He put a kink in the upper wire by my left canine, and that seemed to relieve a lot of the pressure. I still have to wear a Class II on the right side, but I'm back to a triangle on the left. ...

Well... my powerchain is, at least!

A couple of weeks ago I had a great lunch of soft tacos from Taco Bell. To me, they taste better and are much easier to eat with braces, than the regular crunchy tacos. Anyway, I gobbled them up, and found out later that day that whatever the heck they put in with the meat stained my powerchain a nasty shade of amber. I mean, it was so bad, my friend asked me, "Why are your teeth so yellow?" I was able to keep this thing clean for over a ...

Time sure flies when you’re… well, TIME FLIES, anyway!

I figured now would be as good a time as any to ask my ortho “The Question”, but I wanted to do it in such a way that he wouldn’t reply, “I don’t know yet. Teeth move when they want to move,” which seems to be his favorite saying. So, I greeted him warmly, smiled real big and said, “So… 6 more months?”, and gave him a thumbs-up. He immediately replied, “Yeah, ...

Let’s see if I can keep this month’s blog to 1,000 words or less…

One of the most uneventful adjustments I’ve had so far. No wire changes (he just added a pretty big “kink” in my lower wire to help rotate my lower-left lateral incisor); no elastics configuration changes (although he did allow me to go back to my old brand of Jaguar elastics because the last bunch he gave me snapped every two hours, no matter how much or little I moved my mouth). I told him that sometimes ...

My August appointment wasn’t actually scheduled until 8/12, but I “done a bad thing” last week, and had to go in earlier.

Last Thursday, I was using a flexible plastic toothpick thingie to try to dislodge a piece of food from what I thought was the ligature of my upper-left central incisor. Well, in the process of doing that, I accidentally popped the lig off, instead! (And discovered the food was actually stuck in the woven chain UNDER the lig.) There was no way I could put it back ...

Well, today's visit was a pretty productive one. I mentioned to him that I was concerned that every time we go back to Class II elastics, my upper left teeth keep getting pulled UP, when I know we're trying to pull them DOWN. Not sure if he took my comment into consideration—or if this was something he’d already planned to do—but I ended up getting 2 more hooks attached to my lower canines, and he changed my elastics configuration back to triangles. However, these are regular triangles (upper canine ...

#1 Good Thing: No more triangle elastics!!! He put me back on the Class II configuration (top canine to lower back molar). Absolutely no pain or discomfort after putting them on, especially after having to wear those triangles for the past 2-3 months. When he said he wanted to go back to Class II’s, I said, “Oh, upper canine back to lower molar, right?” He just smiled. No need to explain that one to me.
#2 Good Thing: No more nasty, yellow powerchain!! When he asked his assistant ...

My first brace-related boo-boo in over a year happened yesterday. I was eating a piece of chicken and, as usual, was trying to fish out the food stuck in my brackets. I felt something round and "wiry" that definitely was not chicken. Turns out, it was the Lavendar lig on my second-to-last bracketed upper right tooth! I remember the assistant having a heck of a time getting it on there. It took her 4-5 tries, because it kept snapping. Fortunately, the wire is still in the bracket, as well ...

Well, lots of new stuff today – YAY!! The office was crowded today (“crowded” = more than 2 people there. It’s a very small office…), and doc wasn’t very talkative. He told his assistant to give him a .018/.025 wire, and I let out a “Yay!!” (I’d had this other wire since September 2010, so it’s been almost 8 months.) He just smiled and shook his head, as he usually does. I was all set for my Lavendar powerchain, but suddenly he told the girl to give him a clear powerchain. Clear … as in… awful, ...

Hmmm… that sounded odd, didn’t it? No, I’m not talking about the usual things that drop as women get older… I wouldn’t be jumping for joy over that…

Let me rephrase that: My upper left teeth have finally dropped to a more “normal-looking” level, and are no longer edge-to-edge. Actually, the whole upper row has moved down and forwards a bit. They’re still uneven with the right side, but SO much better looking. (Please forgive the yellow-ish tinge… my cell phone doesn’t have ...

One year down… hopefully only one more to go!

After the whole “bite down” spiel, he said, “This is looking really good. You can stop this elastic,” (meaning the one on the right; the only one I was using), and I was ecstatic… for about 2 seconds. He turned right around and told the assistant, “Drop some hooks on the lower 4s, and put a C-chain on the top.” I knew what that meant… more elastic wear! So, she stuck the hooks into my Damons (like building Lego blocks), and ...

I just can’t believe I’m coming up on my 1-year mark next month. It really has flown by so quickly. I tried to get up the guts to ask my ortho how I was doing, but all that (stupidly) came out was, “So, are my teeth moving on schedule?” As soon as I said that, I knew what he was going to say: “I don’t make schedules. Teeth move when they want to move…” Yeah, I walked right into that one. So I rephrased it to “Are they moving along well?” and he said, “Yes, they are moving.” After checking my bite, ...

Well, it’s been a month since I started my elastics, and I must admit, I feel naked without them! I change them after every main meal (B, L, D), and if I happen to “shred” them a bit while eating things I’m not supposed to (popcorn is a big culprit!) The office manager (ortho’s wife) was the one who removed my powerchain today and told me “Your teeth are looking great! Isn’t it amazing how some teeth can move so quickly, and others take forever to even move 1 mm?” That’s the first positive comment ...