Week 41...and new wires!

I meant to post the week by week update over the weekend, but the internet at my place didn't want to co-operate with that plan of mine. Let me tell you, it wasn't fun living without internet, even if it's only for two and half days. Kinda makes me wonder just how we all survived without the internet to eternally entertain us. Well, correction, I am a 90's kid, and I am part of the generation that saw the integration of the internet into our daily lives, so I knew how life worked without the internet...but at the same time, all it took was a weekend without internet for me to realize just how dependent we all are on the internet nowadays. It's both a good and bad thing, I suppose.

Nothing really much happened in Week 41, so it's not like I would've had a long, well thought out blog post for it. The small gap between my lower right central and lateral was still not closed, my top left canine was still a bit tipped inwards, and I remained elastics free. Bite was still fine the way it was, and overall, the main thing I was waiting for was my orthodontist appointment. But before we get to my orthodontist appointment today, per tradition, I shall grace you with a picture of my teeth for the "week by week" segment of this post.

Week 41

And now, onto my appointment.

This appointment actually went rather smoothly, and it was probably the fastest appointment I've had thus far. I was in and out of the office in 25 minutes. I didn't have to wait in the waiting room, and I didn't have to wait too long for the orthodontist to see me once the tech removed the power chains (weirdly enough, she didn't remove the wires before the orthodontist came to do his assessment. Usually the wires are out by the time the orthodontist is looking at my teeth). The orthodontist did his usual thing of asking me to open and close my mouth several times while he examined my teeth, and then it was off to to the tech to carry out the orthodontist's orders.

There's good news and bad news that I received from this current appointment. And because I'm a cup half full type of person, I will start with the good news first.

My wires got changed! It's been awhile, and I had a feeling that I would be getting the wires changed today, just because I've had the previous wires on for over four months already, and they really weren't doing a whole lot in terms of teeth movement (I'm sure they were doing something, it's just not something that I could visibly observe). So this was something that I was looking forward to, so I'm glad that my old wires were final-fucking-ly changed.

That's not the good news though, though it was definitely a plus. The actual good news is that I'm now on "finishing wires". Judging by the name and the very shallow and limited Google search that I ran, these are the wires used to tweak, fix details and finalize things before braces are off. It means that all the heavy duty work has been, for the most part, completed. So it means that I'm at least in the home stretch of my braces journey...however long the home stretch is!

Being the finishing wires, the tech told me that these wires would be the strongest wires I would have. As in, there won't be any wires that are stronger than the finishing wires. And being the strongest wires, these suckers do hurt going in. More so on the bottom arch than the top. In fact, I hardly felt the top wires going in, but boy, there sure was a lot of pressure when she slid the gates down to secure the wires on the bottom. I would say that the pressure was almost as painful as the initial wires used when I first got braces. Almost. The tech also told me that the orthodontist had put a "step" (which is a bend in the wire) in the bottom arch wire, located in the canines, to help position the incisors better. Well, that's what I understood anyway, as I went to this appointment on about four hours of sleep after a night shift at the hospital, so the finer details are a bit blurry to me. I couldn't really see the bends in the wire due to the power chain, but I sure felt them.

Now for the bad news...I'm being put back on elastics, full time. These elastics aren't as bad, but they're still elastics, and they're still a pain and annoyance, and I really, really, really was hoping that I'd be done with elastics for good, but I guess my orthodontist had a different idea on that. The elastics are worn on my top canine, top premolar, and bottom premolar, forming an upside down triangle. And I have to wear this configuration on both sides of my mouth, at least until the next appointment. The tech said the elastics is just to improve my bite, and they'll assess how things are doing in ten weeks.

I'm not too impressed with this development, because I really, really, really enjoyed my elastics-free days while it lasted, but at the same time, I'll always comply with whatever the orthodontist wants me to do, because my desire to have braces come off sooner rather than later greatly overrides my dislike of elastics.

So that was a rather eventful appointment, all packaged and tied neatly with a bow in 25 minutes. Excited about the fact that I've entered the home stretch of my journey, but bummed out about the elastics. But it is what it is, and I look forward to the changes that these finishing wires and elastics will bring.

Onto the finishing wires now....and it's back to elastics we go.