Me and Dee Snyder
It was a toothy afternoon yesterday ... I was in one chair or another for almost two hours. First getting the wires out, then the cleaning, then the ortho appointment. She put me into a number 16 square wire top and bottom (which is bigger/thicker/stiffer than I've had), had me go back to using rubber bands hooked to the far back teeth, switched me to a C-chain elastic on top and did something called interproximal reduction.
They call it that because if they say they're going to file your incisors you might jump out of the chair before they could do it. Adults have 3.5 mm of enamel and they never take more than .5 mm, there should be no problems, but it felt weird. She's trying to get the innter contact surfaces of the front teeth longer so the gumline will come down a bit between them ... this part is just aesthetic. The whole thing led to an interesting conversation about teeth filing, Dee Snyder and other unrelated body modifications.
The combination of the C-chain elastics (the things that go around the brackets, but these also hook together on top) and the rubber bands means that my mouth and teeth are back to hurting, so I need to get another bottle of the Tylenol PM/generic equivalent. Getting the rubber bands hooked on the back teeth is also harder than the other ones ... it's *really* tight back there between the tooth and the cheek, but I figure in a couple of days/week I'll have the hang of it. At the moment it's taking me 4-5 tries each tooth to get it hooked right.
Off to meetings and work--soon the Memorial Day weekend!
They call it that because if they say they're going to file your incisors you might jump out of the chair before they could do it. Adults have 3.5 mm of enamel and they never take more than .5 mm, there should be no problems, but it felt weird. She's trying to get the innter contact surfaces of the front teeth longer so the gumline will come down a bit between them ... this part is just aesthetic. The whole thing led to an interesting conversation about teeth filing, Dee Snyder and other unrelated body modifications.
The combination of the C-chain elastics (the things that go around the brackets, but these also hook together on top) and the rubber bands means that my mouth and teeth are back to hurting, so I need to get another bottle of the Tylenol PM/generic equivalent. Getting the rubber bands hooked on the back teeth is also harder than the other ones ... it's *really* tight back there between the tooth and the cheek, but I figure in a couple of days/week I'll have the hang of it. At the moment it's taking me 4-5 tries each tooth to get it hooked right.
Off to meetings and work--soon the Memorial Day weekend!