No news is good news!

It's been awhile since I posted an update so here I am.  :)
Teeth have been doing their thing which is good. I've made so much progress and things have moved so quickly it's getting difficult to notice the small changes that are happening.
I had a quick appointment at the orthodontist office just for some impressions. It went very well, nothing crazy happened, haha. One of my lower brackets had been bothering me so I grabbed some more wax and went on my way. Super easy! I didn't even need to see Dr Klein which was nice (not that I don't like seeing her, it was just nice because my appointment took all of 15 minutes). My next appointment is June 3rd where I will have a normal adjustment.
That day is looking like it's going to suck though. I have a regular dentist appointment in the morning for a routine cleaning and then the orthodontist appointment right after. Hopefully they are gentle with me! I'll have to remember to stock up on a few soft foods before then.
Other than that, nothing else to really report. In non-teeth news, I've been recently getting into biking and cycling. There is a trail near my house that follows the Charles River directly into Boston. Don and I have decided to make that our goal and do it together. It's roughly 30 miles there and back so it'll be great exercise! The only thing I have noticed so far with our bike rides is that my jaw is sore a little after. I think I strain my jaw or something while wearing my helmet. Gotta figure out a way to stop doing that.

Here are a few photos of progress! They are from about 2 weeks ago,  just never got around to posting them!

Photos! More photos!

I finally sat down and took some better progress photos! I still have an open bite but it's not nearly as bad as before.  Next appointment is May 21st for just impressions. After that, next adjustment is June 3rd.

Fully biting down

Teeth looking straight!

Frontal view smile

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