Is this week over yet?

Happy Monday! And by happy, I mean "happy that this day is over." Today wasn't bad just another tiring day. I added the 2nd elastic to my already elastic-tastic face. This 2nd elastic is a different size than my other ones. They are a bit smaller which makes it that much harder to take on and off. These elastics are such a pain because I feel like I constantly have my fingers in my mouth. I'm still supposed to do jaw exercises and have not been doing them as much as I probably should. I've only gotten around to doing the exercises 2-3 times a day instead of the 4-5 times that Dr. Keith told me to. It's just such a pain because I have to take the elastics out in order to do the PT. Ugh. I'll just have to be better about doing them after I eat and before going to bed.

Teeth are still sore but I'm chalking that up to the elastics doing their thing.  My nose has been extremely dry and wet at the same time. I can feel that it's dry (sorta) but then I notice that it's dripping, It's almost as if I have a perpetual head cold... My lips have gotten more chapped too but I think all this is due to the semi-weird weather we have going on here. 50s and 60s in Boston during December is kinda unheard of... And I work in a hospital so who knows, I could be coming down with a small head cold.

We put together our tree over the weekend. I love the holidays. I really wish I could go all out a little bit more but we definitely don't have the space for it at our current house. The tree came out pretty good though.

As promised, I finally got around to scanning my x-rays! They are pretty cool looking. I hope to ask Dr. Keith or Dr. Klein if I can have a copy of my original x-rays so that I can compare once I'm completely done.

You can see the pins on the lower jaws and the plate in the upper center

Frontal View - The pins in the bottom look like nails! Kinda funny!

Side Profile - Plate on top, pins in the bottom

Our Xmas Tree - My smile just keeps getting better! 

I forgot what pain felt like...

Holy shit. I knew that getting the wires replaced would make me a little sore but I had no idea that it would be like this! I'm definitely in quite a bit of pain. I went out for a girl's evening with my sister and niece and by the time I got home, my mouth was just SO sore. I ended up going to bed as soon as I got home. Don was good enough to give me some ibuprofen and tuck me into bed.

My right side seems to be affected a little bit more and that is the side that has been slower in healing. Sometimes, it feels like I have a wad of gauze in my cheek.

Even though I'm sore now, I'm really glad I pushed my appointment up. My family and I are going to a cousin's wedding next Saturday and I can't imagine that I'd be up to dancing, eating and chatting with friends and other family. So, I'm glad I got it over with so that I can get accustomed to these elastics.

Advice: Take ibuprofen/tylenol before 1st orthodontist appointment after surgery. Take it throughout the day so that it's fully in your system before your appointment. I just took some right before my appointment and it really didn't cut it for me.

A very merry dental halloween

I had my long awaited orthodontist appointment yesterday. The tech who I worked with was a lot of fun. He kept trying to convince me to get Halloween colored bands put on my braces. And when I said no to orange and black, he spent the rest of the appointment convincing me to get brown because brown is the color of thanksgiving. Haha! I ended up getting red.

Since my orthodontist is out on maternity leave I had to see a different orthodontist (Who I can't remember the name of unfortunately). She was very nice though! She looked at my teeth and saw that one of them wasn't moving the way it should have. She had to tie wire around it to stabilize it a bit more and to direct it to move where it's supposed to.

It didn't hurt when it was happening but I always take some ibuprofen before all my appointments. I sometimes walk into an appointment not realizing that I have to have a lot of work done. Later that day, my left side (where they had worked) really started to hurt. It started to bother me in the afternoon and has persisted all day today. I haven't had much of any dental work done since the end of July so yesterday was a little bit of a wake-up call. I had almost forgotten about my braces and PEA (I said ALMOST, not completely haha!)

The nice part is that my next appointment is in another 6 weeks which is December 10th. There was something in my file about "bracket" work to be done at my next appointment which means that I might (MIGHT) be able to say goodbye to PEA. !!!!! Very exciting. I'm going to try to not get my hopes up but it's very difficult! The appointment is only 30 minutes long though so I don't know if that's a long enough appointment for bracket installation and PEA removal. I am so ready to get rid of this thing though! I just can't wait!

Good News, Bad News

Well, I saw my regular dentist yesterday and he gave me good news! The pain/sensitivity that I'm experiencing is not a cavity and does not require any extra work to that area. That was the great news! He thinks that it's a braces issue. Since my teeth are moving, he thinks that one of the bands on my right side might be irritating the tooth when I chew in certain ways. Maybe the band is pinching a nerve? The bad news is that he couldn't really do anything for me so I'll have to wait until I see the orthodontist (which is a week from today). He didn't want to disrupt anything that she had done (which I completely understand). So I'll just have to wait a week until I see her next.
I did have to get 1 cavity filled (the one in the front that was hiding behind the other tooth). It wasn't a big cavity though so he actually did it without using Novocaine. Oh yea, who's a bad ass! I'm totally hardcore. Haha! It made me pretty happy though since administering the local anesthetic can cost some money and I've already maxed out my dental insurance. So anything else will have to be paid out of pocket (which totally blows, btw). Also, today is the last day turning PEA 2.0 twice a day. Now I go down to once a day until next week!
Just thought I would share, nothing else to really report. As I said, my next orthodontist appointment is a week from today. I will write again in about a week then!

More impressions and PEA 2.0 is on it's way!

Well, on Thursday, I had my 5 week post-op check up with my orthodontist. She seemed happy about my progress with PEA and told me that I would need to graduate to a bigger palate expander. In order to get a new one, they needed to take another impression. (Which makes this impression #17 since I started this journey) This involved taking PEA out, doing the impression, then reinstalling PEA.
I'm not going to lie, it was actually pretty uncomfortable. Getting PEA taken out sucked. A lot. It's glued in place and just didn't want to come out. Apparently, the technician didn't use anything to help remove PEA, she just yanked him out. That's probably why it hurt so much! My orthodontist ended up yelling at her though (since I just had oral surgery but NBD). And when she took PEA out, she bent one of the brackets a little making it almost impossible to put back on. They finally got it on but it sits lower on my teeth than it used to so now it's been irritating my lips and getting caught on my upper lip.

Thankfully, I'll only have to deal with PEA until Wednesday. My new palate expander should be in and they'll take the old one out and replace it for me. Can't wait to deal with the pain of getting it removed again! ;_;

Braces Malfunction

Holy hell. I thought spacers were terrible? Let me tell you, what happened to me over the weekend blows those spacers out of the park.
Yesterday, I went to a graduation party for a very good family friend. We were chatting and eating and generally having a good time when I bit down on something, heard a pop, crunch, and another pop. Apparently, when I bit down on something, the wire popped out, bent, and then popped back in. At first, I was ok. A little sore but not bad. But as the day wore on, my mouth pain got worse and worse. So bad that I almost burst into tears on the way home. My hubby spent the night at a friend's house (FIFA world Cup soccer is happening and he's completely hooked!) so I had the bed to myself. I'm so irritated because I woke up every 2 hours or so because of mouth pain. I couldn't enjoy having the bed to myself! What a bummer! I also had to work today and could barely function, the pain was that bad.

I'm sure some of you are wondering, why not take some pain meds and call the dentist? Well, I called the dentist on call and they said that there wasn't really anything I could do today (it is Sunday after all) and I totally understood that. I was nervous because this pain was so bad that I didn't know if I should go to the emergency room. I was worried that maybe part of my tooth broke when I bit down on something, who knows! And I was freaking out because my surgery is on Thursday! Less than 4 days away! She told me to take some tylenol and to call the office first thing in the morning but that she didn't think I'd need to go to the ER unless I got dizzy, nauseous, and started vomitting. She also told me that my wire was probably just in the wrong spot and that if I could, try and pop it back in. And the meds thing? Well, since I'm having surgery on Thursday, I can't take any kind of medication that could thin my blood or cause bleeding risks. All NSAIDs (like Ibuprofen and Naproxen) may cause bleeding risks so tell all surgery-bound patients to stop all NSAIDs a week before surgery to minimize bleeding. I feel like I can never catch a break! Something like this always happens to me.

Well, I ended up leaving work early. I went home and took some more tylenol. Then, I started to fiddle with the wire and then suddenly, I felt another pop and the wire went back in. Oh. My. God. The relief was so instant that I burst into tears. I cried for a good 10 minutes, no joke. I was so happy that I had fixed it and that I wouldn't need any additional dental work. This pain was so similar to when I had an infected tooth and needed a root canal that I wasn't sure if it was a braces thing or an actual tooth thing! I've never cried tears of happiness before today but after everything was ok and I stopped crying, I felt wonderful. I was very tired (since I practically didn't sleep last night!) but I was just too happy and relived that I didn't care.

Thankfully, I'll know what to do should this happen again. And I guess I still have to go to the dentist tomorrow because the wire might be bent and could pop out again. But at least I'm not in a crazy amount of pain anymore!