Thursday 17 June 2010

Day 47 - Can you see that?


There, emerging on the horizon! It's a light at the end of the tunnel!

Today was my latest ortho appointment, and I was determined to find out how long I have left in braces. This has been my aim for the last 3 visits but Dr H has always thwarted me - he'd breeze in once I was already prepared in the chair, have a shufi inside my mouth, issue orders to the assistant then vanish before i'd had a chance to quiz him. This time I was ready to vault out of the chair and rugby-tackle him to the ground if he tried any disappearing acts! So after his initial lookie I tentatively asked if he could tell how much longer I had left. His response was 'Yes I think so....but whether I tell you is another matter'. Ooo you meanie! However he then instructed his assistant to fit finishing wires to me on my next visit and said that he planned to have me finish 'in the Autumn'. Woooo! Now we all know that autumn in ortho-speak probably means the very last day possible in the season, but at least I can be fairly certain that i'm 5 months max away from the big unveiling!

Once he'd gone I asked the assistant what finishing wires were, she said they were known as detailing wires and used to tidy up any last bits. I told her I though my teeth looked just fine as they are now, to which her response was 'just wait and see once we're finished'. How exciting, can't wait!

(P.S. I havn't done a full rundown of swelling/feeling/chewing etc (ie all the really useful stuff to know) for a while so i'll be dishing this up in some detail to celebrate reaching 7 week mark, just 2 days away!)

2 comments:

Aezay said...

I know what you've been through, I had a very huge under bite myself, 11 mm if I remember correctly. That was so big they had to operate on both the upper and lower jaw.
Because they had to move the upper jaw forward, they had to "remodel" the face, so the mouth area wouldn't appear to be protruding from the rest of the face.
Prior to that, I had a palatal expander, which also required an operation.

All this was some years ago, and since I never bothered making a blog, I've forgotten many of the details. But if I remember correctly, I wore braces for about one year after my operation. As my situation was a little different than yours, you'll most likely not have to wait that long.

The best thing is that after some time, once the swelling is down, you wont even think about how you used to look, unless you are reminded by old pictures of yourself.

Congratulations with your new self :)

June said...

Hi D. How exciting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!! The next 5 months will go by so quickly for you. I am pretty close to you, but I'm probably looking at 6 months. That's ok though. I'm just happy to have the surgery behind me. Yeah!