Springs and possibly exciting future appointments

I had an appointment at the hospital on Thursday morning. My ortho changed my wires first of all. I've noticed that lots of you bloggers say about getting thicker wires as time goes on, but as far as I'm aware mine have been the same thickness each time. Anyway, so she changed my wires, and then 'rebonded' one of my brackets. When she said she was going to rebond a bracket, I was worried that would mean taking it off and repositioning it like she did before, which I was not looking forward to as it really hurt last time. But luckily 'rebonding' apparently just means sanding of the glue that's around the bracket and putting some new glue round it, which was a relief!

Then I asked her about this stupid tooth that's out of alignment. She said that she wants the gap between that tooth and the one next to it (not sure if she just means one of the teeth next to it or both of the teeth on each side) to be 1mm bigger, so now she's put a spring going across the out-of-alignment tooth between the teeth on each side of it. This is meant to push those teeth further away from the tooth with no bracket. So once this gap is bigger, she's going to try bringing the tooth forward, but because I apparently have thin gums on the bottom, if she thinks that my gum won't take the pressure of the tooth being brought forward, she's going to take one of my bottom teeth out. I'm not sure which one, and I don't really understand how this would work because then I'd have an uneven number of teeth on the bottom...but I'm sure she knows what she's doing. I hope this doesn't happen though as I'd rather not go through having a tooth pulled out.

Here is a picture of my new spring, followed by some other general pictures of my teeth. Although it wasn't long ago that I posted pictures of my teeth, I feel like they've moved a bit since my appointment on Thursday. Every time I get my braces adjusted my bite feels really bad, and at the moment my teeth only touch at one point at the back on the right side of my mouth, so chewing isn't fun at the moment.

My new spring! There's a little bit of metal that sticks out at the bottom of it and cuts into my bottom lip but it's really easy to position wax over it so that it covers it. I'm hoping I won't run out of wax before my next appointment. I'm pushing my lower jaw forward in this picture so that it was easier to take the photo.

Teeth from the front...I'm still convinced I have a cant...either that or I have a wonky lip lol

After my appointment I went out to speak to the receptionist about the two appointments that I've got booked for 6th and 27th October which got sent to me in the post, just to confirm them. She said the one on 6th is with my orthodontist, but the one on the 27th is a 'joint clinic' appointment, which is when I'll talk to the surgeon as well. By then I will have had my braces on for 7 months so I'm really hoping that we might start talking about surgery dates!

I start my first job on Thursday, and I'm a bit worried about three brace-related issues:

1) What am I going to eat for lunch? I really don't want to take sandwiches because when I bite it I will have brace full of bread. Sandwiches that I can easily break apart with my fingers will be ok, but that's pretty much limited to jam, peanut butter, chocolate spread and marmite. Basically I don't want anything that I have to bite into. I suppose I could make pasta, or salad...any other suggestions for brace-friendly lunches? Also does anyone brush their teeth after lunch at work? I want to but I'm worried they might think I'm a bit weird taking a toothbrush and toothpaste to work!

2) I'm going to have to keep going to hospital appointments. I hope they don't make me take it as holiday, or I'll be using up my holiday very quickly.

3) The actual surgery...at some point I'm going to have to tell them that I'm going to need a month off work after my surgery. I think I'll leave it a while before I break this to them though lol.

I saw my dad again this week (he lives on the Isle of Wight so I don't get to see him much). I showed him some before and after pictures of some of you beautiful bloggers (Dani, Nora and Whitney were the stars of this demonstration lol). I'm still trying to convince him that I'm doing the right thing by having the surgery, and I chose these three bloggers because I think they had very similar bites to mine before surgery and they've all had great results. He agreed that they all looked better after surgery, but still said 'there's nothing wrong with you'. I think people are just so used to my face the way it is that they don't see the problems with my jaws, even though they can see it when I show them pictures of other jaw bloggers.

4 months of braces

Wednesday marked 4 months of braces. I'm doing this in weeks rather than counting it on the same day of the month that I got my braces on if that makes sense. So technically it's 16 weeks. This is going to get complicated by the time I've had them for a year, because there are obviously 52 weeks in year, but 48 divided by 4 is 12 months...hmm I'll have to worry about that when I get there!

Anyway there's not much change in my teeth - nothing I can really notice anyway - so these pictures are probably pretty boring, but I'm just doing it every month so that I have a record for myself.

There are some occassions when I see a photo of myself and think 'THAT's why I'm having this surgery'. This happened the other day when I got my graduation photo sent to me in the post. I think I look terrible, all because of my smile. It looks so gummy. I'm not saying I think I'll consider my face to be perfect after surgery, but at the moment I just feel like my face is ruined by my teeth. Another thing I noticed in my graduation photo is that I show more gum on one side of my smile than the other. This has got me worrying that I have a cant, and I really don't want them to start saying about tilting my top jaw, as I know that this is what ended up with Tina being unhappy with her surgery. I'm probably just being over analytical and paranoid about it, but now in every photo I take of my mouth I seem to be showing more gum on one side than the other. But for some reason I can't see this in the mirror, only in photos. If I do have a cant I think I'd rather they just left it alone, because I've never noticed it before and I don't want to risk them overcompensating for it and risk having an asymetrical face after surgery.

Anyway here are my 4 month (16 weeks) pictures. I don't know if anyone can notice this cant I'm seeing, but if anyone has any thoughts about whether this actually exists or if I'm being completely mad, please feel free to let me know!

This is my natural smile and I'm sure I'm not imagining that there's more gum showing on the right side of my mouth (the left side of the photo) :s

There also seems to be more gum showing on my right side photo (below) than my left side photo (above)

I spent a few days staying at my dad's this week. He's probably the person who's the most sceptical and unaccepting about my surgery. He just keeps saying 'I don't know why you're going through with it'. But we've had that conversation a million times before and I couldn't be bothered to have it again, so I just kept saying 'Well I do, so let's not go over it again'. My sister said to him that nobody knows why I want to do it, which is true, but at least my mum and my sister have accepted that I am doing it. I said to my dad 'I'm sure you'll see the benefits once it's done'. He agreed and said he was sure there would be benefits, but kept insisting that 'There's nothing wrong with your face now'. I wonder how many times I'm going to hear that...

I have my next hospital appointment in just under 3 weeks on 25th August. I really hope my ortho sorts out that stupid wonky tooth with no bracket on at my next app. I think I'm going to start nagging her about it. I'm starting my first job on 1st September and I think I'd feel slightly less self-conscious about my braces if she'd bring it into alignment with the others.