One aspect, however, which is definitely NOT amusing me is my new appearance in photographs. I've been browsing through various shots of me taken over the christmas period and can't help noticing that my brace does not take a good photo. Not sure whether it's due to camera's inability to pick up the detail of a brace, but every picture taken of me from more than about half a meter away shows the inside of my mouth as a murky grey/brown smear, as though i'm suffering from some dreadful teeth-rotting disease! Even worse is when the flash catches one of the brackets and creates a twinkle, it just looks terrible. I have started to practice my mouth-closed smiles, but at the moment this just makes me look constipated. I think i'll stick to ducking behind other people from now on.
I also enountered a situation over christmas that reminded me not to get too complacent about eating out in braces. It was the 27th December and A. and I decided to check out the sales at a new shopping centre that has just opened in West London. Needless to say it was bedlam, and after several hours in the shops we were both starving. We looked around for food places, but they all seemed to be either packed out or had huge queues outside. We trawled up and down looking for anywhere that had space and finally squeezed into a french cafe, only then to realise that they served hard, crusty filled baguettes! I was so hungry I had a go cutting one up with a knife and fork (much to the amusement of the waiters) and when that didn't work, resorted to scraping out the filling with a fork and eating it that way. Hardly enjoyable, or diginified, so i'll remember to think ahead and take an emergency banana out with me in case I get caught out again :)
So it's only 10 days now until the dreaded 'First Adjustment'. Seems that some other ortho-bloggers have found this more painful than the initial fitting, so i'll keep some painkillers to hand, just in case. I also have a few questions for Dr. H which i'll report on in my next post, i'm tempted to ask about timescale until my surgery but it's probably a bit soon!
3 comments:
Oh my goodness, do I ever feel your pain on the 'dirty mouth' pictures!!!! I swear it has something to do with the angle of light, 'cause if there's any shadow at all, it does turn your mouth into a (what looks like) stinking precipice of goo. Blech!
Tilting one's head to enable the light to give the braces a sparkle can be dangerous however, especially as underbiters raising there chins tends to be something we avoid and part of the reason for wearing the darned things in the first place! *sigh* Laughed hard at the closed-mouth constipation grimace... I'd never thought of it in quite that way before, haha!
Have fun with the first adjustment. Hard to say if it'll be uncomfortable or not....I had quite a few with little discomfort whatesoever, so you stop bothering with the painkillers, and THAT's when you'll get a nasty one. Sure doesn't hurt to pop something beforehand, just in case~
Good luck :)
My teeth are definitely not as white as they use to be simply because tooth brush can't clean the wide expanse of tooth now interrupted by the brace.
On the other hand my gums are the healthiest they've ever been as I'm brushing in the right direction now!
Hi Kate, thanks for your message! Glad i'm not the only one whos noticed that my teeth don't exactly resemble the shiny white specimens in the brace ads, guess I shouldn't have been foolish enough to think that models under studio lights resemble real life. Oh well, bigger picture.
Hi CHTT, I've been getting really bothered about tooth discolouration too, it's one of subjects i'll be quizzing Dr H about on Monday. I'll report what he has to say in my next post.
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