Braces

Yesterday I got my braces off--finally! I had them on for EXACTLY seventeen months. They were pretty much a pain...

Getting them off wasn't horrible. Here's how they did it:

First my dentist/orthodontist, Dr. Thomas, broke the brackets off. It didn't hurt too much. Well, some of them hurt, others didn't. The ones that didn't hurt, I just kinda felt a jolt. The ones that did? YOWZA! Some of my teeth are pretty sensitive.

Then they had to take off the rings on my back molars. Those are the things that hold the wire intact. That didn't hurt too much, but they were really cemented on there. One wasn't cemented as hard, and came off pretty easy. But the last one they really had to work and I was in PAIN!

Once all that was off, the flaky cement swirled around in my mouth and I almost gagged. It tasted horrible! I remembered when I had to get the rings cemented on and swallowed some of the cement accidentally and couldn't eat that night. I couldn't swallow, obviously, so I just held it with my mouth closed. They let me rinse out my mouth.

So then I had to get my teeth "smoothed," so that the excess cement would be gone and my teeth would look normal, instead of bumpy. This meant that one of the assistant-people (she was one of two people who were allowed to use the smoother there) had to rub this thing around my teeth. It blew a bunch of coooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllldddddddddd air on my teeth, and my arms got goosebumps. It wasn't too bad, except when she did some of the teeth a long time, they would get really cold, and my front bottom teeth are very sensitive to cold.

Then another lady had to take molds of my teeth. So there's this big metal thing they put over your top or bottom teeth, which takes up a lot of room in my mouth. Imagine that, filled to the brim with icky sticky goo. It's not pretty. They have to hold it in there for two minutes or until it hardens. The only cool part was that it tasted like spearmint. But when she was taking the molds for the bottom teeth, this little piece was at the back of my tongue and I almost gagged. I pushed it out onto my lip, though, and took it off. Bleah... and then the bottom mold wasn't right, so she had to do it again.

So we left, and Dad went back at 5:30 to get my temporary retainer. So I'm wearing it now, and I can't stop staring at my beautiful new teeth. ☺