Teeth
I think everyone experiences shame about something. Some people are weirdly vocal about the things they feel shame about. I have mostly kept quiet, and I still don't want to go into it much.
In 2007, shortly before I returned to Korea "for good" (that is, after two short stints, and before getting my first regular job), I had a bad experience at the dentist.
Back up. Throughout college, I had a lot of cavities filled. I didn't brush my teeth enough and I ate a lot of junk food.
Back up. In junior high school I had braces.
So 2007. One day the dentist was filling a cavity, and I went home, and the bite was wrong. It hurt. So I went back, and she tried to fix it. And it was still wrong and still hurt. I don't remember what it was like, I just know it was distinctly uncomfortable. After the third (or fourth?) time she tried to adjust it, she suggested seeing a dentist who specialized in occlusion.
There's full occlusion and there's . . . not full occlusion, but he recommended I get full occlusion, and mentioned something about my orthodontics work (braces) having been poor, or having led to poor results, and a full occlusion might address that. A full occlusion is when a dentist goes in and tries to drill down bits of all your teeth in order to fix the bite. Just typing that out sounds horrifying. I wish I'd known anything about anything back then.
Fast forward. It is possible for teeth to move over time. It is possible for people who once had braces, who once had a corrected bite, to have an incorrect bite later in life. It is possible that instead of a full occlusion, a second go at braces (or a go at invisalign, if that was a thing at the time) might have addressed my problem.
Anyway, back to 2007. The full occlusion didn't solve things really.
And my bite remained vaguely uncomfortable for over a decade. I had good periods and bad periods. I endured. And finally I gave up in 2019 and went to two dentists to get a consultation. They both said I needed my bite corrected, and recommended invisalign.
I wore invisalign for just about two years, and probably around 40 total aligners. And then I got a retainer to wear at night.
And basically the discomfort problem is the same, except now I have two new problems.
The alignment of my teeth, thanks to the retainer, has an effect on my nasal cavities such that it's made them narrower. This in itself isn't a big problem, but it actually causes my ears to often feel stuffy, such that I have to swallow to clear them. The second problem is in December, suddenly a noticed a popping sensation in my right ear in response to certain noise, including my own voice. This is usually a symptom of a much worse condition. In my case, it seems to be related to my teeth and my bite. Both of these problems don't hurt, but they're quite annoying.
This Thursday I will be seeing a TMJ specialist. I don't know if it's specifically TMJ that's the problem. I hope he's just good at all this ears/nose/jaw/teeth stuff and can figure out what I need now.
None of this stuff is holding me back in life. It's not impairing my appetite, my work, my sleep. But I want it to go away.