Adjustment number eight! Probably the least interesting of all the adjustments so far, as there’s no new hardware, no new elastics, just more of the same until my eyeteeth are touching my bicuspids.
The orthodontic assistant, when she was briefing the doctor, started by saying that I’m “in month 13 of treatment.” For some reason, that kind of struck me. I’m past the one-year mark with braces — not quite at the halfway point.
As I already mentioned, my wires are the same (18 round on top, 18 x 18 square on bottom), my crimp stops are still in place, and I’m still wearing chains. She put fresh chains on, of course, so things are feeling just a smidge tight this evening. No real pain, though; I had expected to be buying some soup for lunch, but didn’t need to after all.
Dr. N. says that the goal right now is to — how did he put it? — directionally reposition my teeth so that the eyeteeth (cuspids) move back to touch the bicuspids, essentially swapping the space that we made by extracting my first bicuspids. Then, once they’re touching, we’ll start moving the front four teeth back to reduce or eliminate the overbite. I straight-up asked him if all my teeth will touch at the same time when we’re done with treatment. He said that, yes, that’s the goal — or to get as close as we can to that.
I can’t even imagine what that will be like.
I also asked him about the back molars, and how they don’t currently line up with the front molars, and he explained that we have to get the front ones in place first, then we can adjust everything in the back. Eventually, the back molars will get brackets, too, which makes sense.
I continue to be fascinated by the physics and biology that’s happening in my mouth.
Hello I have to get my first premolars removed soon (bottom only) so I was curious how long it took for your teeth to shift closer enough for it to look not much like a gap? I’m horribly going to be self conscious about it!
Karla,
I responded to you via e-mail, but I wanted to make sure to post my reply here, too.
Well, the bad news is that — for me, at least — the gap-shifting just made the gaps more visible instead of less. My ortho moved my eyeteeth back to touch my second premolars, and they’ve just now finished moving all the way. Yours might plan for something else, though.
The good news is that — again, for me — the lower teeth are less obvious in general than the upper teeth, so no one may notice unless you point it out.
I thought I was going to be self-conscious about it, but I actually ended up being almost excited. The crowding goes away pretty quickly once the teeth have somewhere to go, so it’s not an entire tooth’s worth of gap, anyway.
Hope that helps!