Hannibal eat you heart out (no pun intended!)

I am on proper count down now, I have been lead to believe that I will have the braces off in 2 months, providing that the next stage goes to plan, which in the past it all has, but touch wood anyway!

My last visit to the orthodontist went smoothly, although I didn’t understand what was happening till he had finished.

Last time I went he was saying things for his assistant to note down, teeth numbers and technical stuff I didn’t understand. But this time it all became clear. Firstly he asked for some technical thing, which basically means a piece of metal wire that he twists round the bracket to form a hook above the top teeth and below the bottom ones. Obviously because it is in my mouth, they feel like they are 10 feet tall and visible from space. But in reality, they are a little noticeable, but not to the point that it is going to stop me from smiling and laughing, you can see them on the picture below.

Anyhow.....after he fixed these, 4 to the top and 4 to the bottom, he then put on some new arch wires and told me that I am going to hate him....interesting.....which for the last few days I have!

Every night I have to truss my gob together with 4 elastic bands, fixing the top jaw to the bottom jaw so that it pulls my teeth in line and closes the gap so I can bite burger lettuce again. Once these bands are on it is impossible to open my mouth, which is the strangest, and one of the most horrible, experience I have gone through in this treatment. Imagine dreaming that you are having your mouth held shut and you are fighting it, scary. Also you can't lick your lips, cue endless amounts of lipbalm before bed. If you want a drink of water in the night, think again, not even a straw is getting through there!

The first night I managed to keep them on for 5 hours, after waking myself up every 2 hours by trying to open my mouth, feeling like I was ripping my front teeth out at the roots, the pain just got too much so I relented and took them off and got 3 hours quality sleep. The following night I managed 6 hours, with much of the same process. Last night I managed 8 hours, only really suffering the tooth ripping jaw snap once...how very brave of me! I am now hoping that the worst is over and I can put them on every night without too much sleep deprivation.

However I can see the difference already. Also I am highly motivated to go through that pain so I don’t prolong the treatment. This is the only part of it that has been my responsibility, I don’t want it to fail because on my pain threshold and wimpyness of a lack of sleep.

So as you can see from the below picture, every night I go through a ridicule of turning into Hannibal Lecter and answer with "and I ate his liver with a bottle of nice Chianti"!!!!!

So providing that this part of the treatment has the results that are required, next visit I will have the impressions for the removable brace taken and following that, fingers crossed, I will be permanently brace free!!!