Super long post - sorry in advance!

Here's another update and some good news! I didn't turn into jaws at this appointment!!! While I'm ready to be done with everything and be surgically-ready, not sure I was ready to have an orthognathic wire installed at my last appointment. My most recent appointment was Friday April 24th. I had an afternoon appointment which was very different for me. Usually with my schedule, morning appointments work best. However, this time, it just worked out that an afternoon appointment was best. A lot happened at this appointment so I'm sorry if this post is a tad longer than normal.

Dr Klein and I spoke and she looked at my teeth quite closely at this visit. She kept tilting my face and I constantly had to smile, open, bite down, smile again and then open again. Haha! One of my teeth was remodeled as a kid and I think it's proving to be a little difficult. I swam into a pool ladder and chipped my front tooth when I was 9 years old. It was fixed before my teeth were straight so they fixed it to match my teeth esthetically. Now that my teeth are straight and where they should be, this one tooth is a little larger than the other one. I will probably need to get it remodeled at some point but it doesn't really bother me that much. She said that she is now getting down to fine-tuning my teeth which is good because it means they are almost good to go!
 Dr Klein is so funny, she asked if I minded if she went a little OCD on my teeth. LOL. She wanted to re-position the brackets to fine tune the teeth to make them absolutely perfect. Moving the brackets would make my appointment run a tad longer (since it originally wasn't booked for a bracket re-positioning) so I'm glad she thought to ask. I think the brackets being moved maybe might have saved me from getting my "jaws" installed, so thanks for that! I'm hoping that I can put off getting that wire installed until the very last second. The other nice thing about getting the brackets moved is that they scale back on the wire for the next 4-6 weeks. The teeth can only take so much so they don't want to stress them out too much. So I went with a different wire and I have regular O-Rings instead of the viscous A-Chain. My teeth weren't nearly as sore as they have been recently. I thought I was going to be much more tender the next day but it wasn't too bad at all!

I was a little sore before I even arrived at the office though. Last Saturday, a bunch of our friends invited us to play beach volleyball with them. We had such a blast playing and it really made me remember how much I liked playing volleyball. I'd love to play in an local league or something but not sure it'll work out with my schedule and Don's schedule. However, halfway through our second game my husband punched the ball right into my throat/jaw on my right side. It definitely stunned me and he felt super bad. It didn't hurt at first but slowly started to get sore and very stiff. I think Dr Klein could tell that something was up with my jaw but jaw pain is not her expertise. She told me to call Dr Keith (the oral surgeon) which got me a little bummed. Something like this could derail my progress and slow everything down. She told me to call right away but I woke up on Saturday with less pain so I think I just need some time. If the stiffness/soreness gets worse, I'll definitely call Dr. Keith but I'm sure he'll just tell me to rest up and take it easy which is what I'm doing.

Right before my appointment was over, Dr Klein told me that she has a patient who reads my blog! Wow! I mean, I know that other people besides friends and family read this but it's really crazy to hear it from my orthodontist. Due to HIPPA, she couldn't give him out my information however, he gave her his card and told me that I could take his information and do what I wanted with it. I was so amazed that I couldn't NOT email him so I did that over the weekend. Getting the card made me wonder though, I thought I had set up a way to contact me through the blog. When I got home I took a look at my blog settings and realized that the layout and theme I had chosen when I updated the blog, were not compatible with all the added stuff I had chosen! So I had to redo the theme and layout AGAIN. So I'm sure you noticed that the layout and theme have changed yet again. But now all the stuff works like I want it to!
If anyone needs to contact me in any way, please use the contact form to the right! It works, I swear (i tested it to make double sure!) and all messages get forwarded to my own personal email.

 Now onto some fun stuff, aka progress photos.

I snapped a quick selfie after my brackets were removed but before the new ones were replaced. It gave me a good sense of what my teeth will look like once they are off forever.

These are my models! The yellow ones are the most recent and the white ones are the very first models I took back in 2014. You can really see how different my teeth and jaws are now. The bottom models are my top teeth jaws and the top models are my bottom teeth jaws.

Really crappy morning teeth selfie. 

My next appointment is in May to have (you guessed it) more impressions done. Hahaha. I don't need to see Dr. Klein at this appointment though. I'll see her again the first week in June for another adjustment. So 2 upcoming appointments! 

Mistake

I made a big mistake recently. I was told by my orthodontist that I would be fitted for a surgical wire sometime in the near future. I was curious and decided to Google my way through finding out what exactly an orthognathic surgical wire was.

HUGE MISTAKE. BIG.

The wire is something out of a horror movie. It's a wire with these prongs that go in between each bracket. The prongs hold the elastics that hold your teeth to your face after surgery. I understand what that means in words but seeing it in photos is just a whole new level of awful for me.

I showed my husband the pictures and he gleefully said, "you'll be like jaws from the James Bond movies!" Great. Just fantastic. Can't wait.

EDIT: Here's a picture to show just how horrifying this is gunna be. 

Braces adjustment and some news!

I had my most recent orthodontist appointment on Friday. The visit went very well! Dr. Klein still can't get over how fast my teeth are coming together. She was extremely pleased. I showed her a few pictures that I had taken. She was astounded, and again, very happy with the progress.

My teeth have been moving so fast that she told me that I would need to come back in 4 weeks and redo my impressions. The models that she had are no longer valid. Impressions are really such a pain but I don't have to pay to redo them so I'm fine with it. They are just a diagnostic tool for the doctor. And getting impressions doesn't really hinder my progress in any way so it's really not a problem. It just sucks that I'll have to redo them again.  

When I went she told me that I'm very close to being ready for surgery. (!!!!!!!!) At my next visit, she's going to put on a surgical wire on my bottom teeth and then reevaluate and decide when to put a surgical wire on the top teeth. I'm not sure what a surgical wire is exactly but I'll find out in 4 weeks. I'm thinking it's a thicker/stronger wire to keep the teeth together during and after surgery. Oh how wrong I was! See this post to find out what an orthognathic surgical wire actually is. 

The only issue she had is that one of my back molars isn't moving in the direction she'd want so now I have to wear an elastic to help encourage it to move in the right way. I only have to wear 1 elastic at night on the left side. It's very weird, it hooks onto the front of the back tooth but then the other side hooks to the back of my bottom tooth. It seems very strange but that's what I'm doing. The past 2 nights have been a little rough. The elastic puts a lot of pressure on that tooth (doing what it's supposed to) so I've been waking up a lot during the night. Last night I took some tylenol before bed and it didn't seem to bother me as much as it did the night before. I've been very good about not taking ibuprofen so maybe that's why my teeth are moving so quickly? Who knows!

After getting both top and bottom A chains replaced along with the bottom wire, Dr. Klein and I talked about surgery. It's now looking like I'll have the surgery sometime around August or early September. It seems sorta like a perfect time to get it done I think. If it's in August, I'll still be able to enjoy the summer (my college bestie is visiting again in July so that's exciting!). And then another friend is having her bachelorette party in October that I'm hosting. If I have surgery in August, that'll give me more than enough time to recover fully. I may not be able to eat much but I'll still have a good time I think. If the date gets moved back to anytime after September though, I'm planning on waiting until the end of October. That will allow me to enjoy the bachelorette party and my own wedding anniversary. Plus, If I get the surgery in October, my recovery will include Thanksgiving and that's all soft foods. It'll probably be one of the first meals I'll be able to enjoy that's not a liquid.

I can't believe that I'm so close to getting this surgery date. I know that August seems so far away but I've been waiting for this surgery since May 2013. I can sorta see the light at the end of this tunnel! 

New Layout and Design

It's been awhile since I've changed the layout of the blog. I got really sick of the purple/pink combo that I had before and decided it was time for a change. I really like this new layout that I chose. It is very clean, very simple, and very easy to navigate. Hopefully you all like it cause I think it looks pretty sharp! (Thanks to blogger for the template, it's pretty nifty!)

Everything is pretty much the same except for the side bars. If you are looking for specific posts from a certain date or want to see all posts under a certain label, please look to the black bar on the right side. Once your cursor hovers over it, it'll expand with the various options. Super cool. If you'd like to subscribe to the blog (so you get notified any time I post something new), that is also under the black side bar. 

As always, teeth are doing their thing. They are a little sore today but nothing too terrible. The large gaps that I had a few months back are pretty much nonexistent now. 

On a different note, I was listening to Owl City and this song came onto my playlist. It's pretty much my jam now so I thought I'd share. The song is entitled 'Dental Care' by Owl City. 

It always leaves me in a good mood after because it's so ridiculous and yet this is my life on a daily basis. 

Just rolling along...

Nothing much to report except that my teeth are still doing their thing and moving into the right position. :) My once large gap has diminished so much that I can no longer stick my tongue out through it while biting fully down. (Yea, I was able to do that before braces. Totally crazy, right?!)

Ok, so this picture is kinda old but this was my smile 2.5 years ago. And yes, I'm biting down completely. My teeth were totally jacked!

And this is from March 4th 2015! 

It's unbelievable how much my teeth and jaw have changed in 3 short months!  I'm so pumped to go to the orthodontist in 2 weeks. It will be nice to actually talk about the future and surgery versus being told 'not yet.' I'm ready to move on and start recovering!

It amazes me that I waited so long to get this taken care of. In fact, most of the pictures from our wedding and our honeymoon, I had a closed mouth smile. I was so self conscious of it that it really does come through in some of our pictures. And now, I don't even care that I have a mouth full of metal. My smile is larger than ever. Sometimes I kick myself for waiting as long as I did. But, the past is past and I can only move forward.

Next update will be on Friday, March 20th after my orthodontist appointment. Hopefully I hear good things and don't rage afterwards. :D

This winter can suck it.

I am so done with this winter, it's not even funny. Seriously mother nature, we get it. We are very sorry for whatever it is that we did. We apologize.

So for those of you reading this blog NOT from New England, we've been getting crazy amounts of snow this year. So crazy that public transit has been forced to shut down multiple times. In total, I believe we have collectively gotten 6 ft of snow so far this winter with 4 ft the past 2 weeks alone. And we have another BLIZZARD bringing another 2 feet of snow tomorrow night. What a joke!

Because of all this weather, it's really screwed around with my dental appointments. I was supposed to have another appointment this past Wednesday. I didn't want to drive in because I thought parking would be terrible. There are snow banks everywhere in Boston, especially around the Mass General Hospital area (just my luck, the worst place for traffic and snow just so happens to be where I need to go. Figures.). I decided to take my chances with the T and was just about halfway there when I get a phone call from the dentist telling me that my appointment has been cancelled due to the Doctor being unable to make it into the office. GREAT. Thankfully, it was my day off so I didn't need to rush into work or anything but now I had to reschedule my appointment to a different day and that day I would be working. Even better. I was a little irritated because the dental office tried to reschedule my appointment to 3 weeks after this one. I don't want to be a bitch or anything but, in my opinion, it is unacceptable. I'm not a patient getting a routine dental cleaning and I'm not going into the office just for shits and giggles. I'm going into the office to prepare for a major surgery. Even minor delays can really impact my timeline. And the sooner I have surgery, the sooner I won't be coming into their office every 4-6 weeks. They just need to get their shit together. I also maybe threatened the secretary with tooth decay and my teeth falling out (because of the spacers) so maybe that's why I got a better appointment. I guess going into psycho-bitch mode really does work!

I had my appointment today and my orthodontist was so impressed with how fast my teeth are moving. She couldn't believe how much my teeth had moved in just 2 weeks! I got the spacers removed because I was supposed to get bands put around the back 2 top molars. Unfortunately, those 2 teeth are kinda problematic. They aren't fully down all the way. Half of them are still underneath the gum (WTF teeth!). She tried putting a band around one of them and it just wouldn't fit without totally destroying my gum around it. She decided to omit the back brackets for now and thinks that 6 more weeks of straightening might give them some more room to come down so that she can put the bracket on. Why can't the gum recession happen back there?! Geez. But she was so impressed that she told me that they were going to do some impressions and then she would look at the models and give me a better idea of when I can expect to have surgery. Once they dry and she gets a chance to look at them, we'll talk about surgery. !!!!!!! She told me that I'm very "close" to almost having straightened teeth. And now I might have surgery sooner rather than later. Wahoo!

This whole roller coaster of emotions is a little exhausting. First being told Jan-Mar 2015 for surgery, then told Jan-Mar 2016 for surgery. Then the disappointment. Now it's looking like potentially August or September 2015 for surgery? Maybe? I don't know! Now my spirits are up just a little bit. It's very tiring and almost impossible to plan anything life-wise.

My next appointment is in 5 weeks and that's when we'll talk surgery. I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing until then. I ended up getting an appointment at the Danvers office next time so I refuse to go into Boston proper again until winter is over.

I know I don't say it often, but I really couldn't go through this experience without my family and friends. Their support means a lot to me, even if it's mostly me bitching and complaining. Either way, thank you to everyone who listens to me with a sympathetic ear.

I'm trying to keep my promise of posting photos along with my updates but it's hard. I always write something and then forget the pictures. Here is one new photo taken today. I've also reposted 2 other photos so people can see the difference. I've only gone back 5 weeks so check out my recent progress!

Taken 2/14/15

Taken 1/30/15 (two weeks ago)

Taken 1/7/15 (5 weeks ago)

Ok, let's try this again...

After winter storm Juno ruined my dental plans for last Wednesday, I finally had my appointment on Friday. They ended up having to fit me in during the office lunch break so the place was very quiet. It was nice and refreshing. Dr Klein was very excited to see the progress of my teeth and wasn't disappointed. She said my teeth are coming along beautifully which makes me happy. It makes everything I'm going through sorta kinda worth it. Haha!

I asked about maybe getting a better idea of when I can expect to have surgery. She laughed and told me that all her patients have that in common. We just want to know a date! (Well... duh!) She told me that at my next appointment, we'll do some impressions and molds and then she'll have a better idea by looking at the models of how my teeth are moving. I'm excited even though I hate doing impressions.

Some not so good news is that I have some gum recession going on. My aunt and cousin warned me that there was a high probability that gum recession would happen and my orthodontist has told me that it's started. She told me that it happens sometimes which is unfortunate. However she said she wouldn't have changed my treatment had she known this would happen. She told me to think of one thing at a time. Surgery first and then after I've recovered, I'll probably need to do a gum grafting procedure to fix the gum recession problem. Ugh. I'll worry about that later. 

Now that my teeth are starting their straightening journey, they need to close the gaps that the palate expander created. So she tied 2 sets of teeth together with some wire and put a criss-cross band on my top teeth. Holy hell, my mouth was sore even before I left the office. And I took pain medication 30 minutes prior to my appointment. A technician that I haven't seen before worked on my jaw. She kept asking me if I was ok which was very sweet. I think she got a kick out of me cause at the end, she asked me how I felt. I told her I felt, "Awesome.". She laughed. Apparently, she appreciated my dry humor.

On top of my teeth getting pulled together, I also had spacers put around my upper back molars. So my jaw is really freaking sore. It hurt to eat a banana this morning. I eventually had to mash it up and eat it that way. I've got some mashed potatoes and plan on making some squash too. So I should hopefully be set for a little while. 

So, I've promised some progress photos so here they are! 

Right Profile

Left profile

Frontal View with my off center bite. It's hard to see the criss-cross band because it's silver.

That arrow shows my gum recession. It sucks. Fortunately, it's not visible when I smile. Also, don't mind my stained teeth. I've been using chlorhexidine again and it does a number staining your teeth. I have another dental cleaning soon which will take care of that.