Hygienist appointment and surgical hooks!

Yesterday was a busy day teethwise!  In the morning I went to the hygienist as I thought it was a good idea to get my mouth all nice and clean before surgery!  As I've said in previous posts, I thought my bottom teeth were a lost cause and that there would be nothing they could do to get rid of the brownness because it had got so bad.  However, the hygienist (who turned out to be someone I used to go to primary school with!) did a really good job!  My bottom teeth are hardly brown at all now!  She said that she'd be able to do a better job once the braces were off, but I'm thrilled with the result!  They are so much better than they were, and now I feel reassured that I won't have to have a perfect bite with brown teeth!

In the afternoon I went to the hospital to have my 'wafer' fit.  This is a term that I've never come across before in my jaw research.  Has anybody else?!  Anyway, having my 'wafer fit' turned out to just be the ortho shoving some plastic outlines of my teeth up against my top and bottom teeth.  Apparently they fit perfectly, but I wouldn't have been able to tell!  They also put my surgical hooks on!  I didn't know they were going to do that at that appointment, but I suppose we're running out of appointments for all these things to happen now!  Nobody warned me that putting surgical hooks on was painful!  He was getting these pliers, and then he would put both hands on them, sit back and pull and twist really hard!  Anyway, they're on now!  They gave me some wax but so far it hasn't been very painful in terms of rubbing on my mouth. 

They also gave me some info about what to expect after surgery, which just said stuff about appearance, swelling, eating etc.  It also said about 'the blues' and said about people getting mild depression on about the 3rd day, which I've seen a lot of during my jaw research.  However, it said that this is caused by the drug that they give you to help with swelling causing an elevated mood, so that when you're taken off of it you feel a bit depressed.  I didn't know it was because of this drug specifically.  I suppose that this combined with all the other traumas of jaw surgery is a good combination for mild depression!

The ortho took lots of photos of me again.  It makes me laugh that he always just uses his iPhone as if the photos are just for his own personal use!  He also kept saying 'Big smile, show me the teeth!' which was making me feel like I was on some very bizarre fashion shoot!  Every time my appointments with him end, he always says 'It's gonna be great' or 'It will all be worth it in the end'.  I bloody hope he's right!  He also said that I really need to keep my mouth clean over the next week, so I'm about to go and clean my teeth when I've finished writing this as I've just eaten some grapes!  I'm literally cleaning them after I eat anything!

Here is a pic of my teeth with their surgical hooks!  The only annoying thing is I'm going for an interview tomorrow for a job I really want, and looking like Jaws from James Bond isn't going to make me feel confident!  I want to look like a professional young woman, not a goofy braced-up teenager!

I wanted to show off my bottom teeth in the picture below because they are so white compared with how they used to be!  Ok, so they're not the nicest, brightest, whitest teeth in the world, but they are a million times better than they were!