Tinsel E - part 4

Week 4 of dental captivity. Here is the update.

The canker sores are gone and have been replaced by "callouses" in the spots where my braces rub the most. This is not to say I'll never get another canker sore... one mis-bite or other blow to the mouth (say, DJ head butting me in the mouth) will result in a canker sore. I've decided that canker sores are the worst part about having braces. They hurt ALL THE TIME, you can't talk, and you certainly can't eat. Although there are over the counter topical relief products, they don't last very long because saliva does it's job and washes the topical product away.

My mouth always feels like I've been chewing gum all day. It's that "tired of chewing" fatigue. Yet, I'm barely chewing anything these days. In fact, the softer and smaller the food, the better. I'm cutting up my food into tiny pieces, like the way I'd cut it for DJ to eat so that he could effectively swallow it whole if he chooses not to chew it (which he does regularly). So I'm eating the way he is... I'll make one attempt at chewing and then just swallow it whole. The result is that a) I just get frustrated with eating because it takes son long (even with swallowing stuff whole because it takes so much longer to cut up everything that small) so I just don't bother and b) I'm usually still hungry after a meal. This is maddening but frankly, it is truly that much easier to remain hungry than to try and eat.

To boot, I can't bite into anything with my front teeth. They are sore still whether I'm eating anything or not. If I do try to bite something with them, it's excrutiating. So then I try to bite it with my back teeth, but that opens the door for breaking a wire or a bracket, so I refrain from doing that, too.

From what I can tell, I've lost 5 pounds since I got the braces because of the braces. I'm certainly not exercising... too lazy right now, but that'll change come field hockey season. At least that's a plus! I'm wearing a belt for the first time in a year! :-)

My dental health has got to be better because of this. I'm always paranoid that I have food caught in my braces and am brushing 2-3 times a day, not including the multitude of times I rinse my mouth out. Brushing is a little painful because of pressure of the brush against the teeth, no matter how light the pressure is. But it's better than having food stuck...talk about unsightly and believe it or not, uncomfortable.

I tried flossing a few days ago. What a PAIN. For each tooth, I have to thread the floss under the wire between the brackets on the front side of the tooth, and then floss that particular tooth. Rinse, repeat. Holy moley it takes me forever to floss. To boot, flossing between certain teeth really hurts; I'm guessing those are the teeth that are moving the most.

At night when I sleep, I'm drooling, forcing me to sleep with a towel on my pillow at night now. I'm dry mouthed, too, so I must be sleeping with my mouth open. Or, I'll wake up and my teeth really hurt; I must be clenching my mouth shut. Faaaantastic.

Despite all that, I can already tell that my bottom teeth have moved. From the top looking down, the teeth that were starting to get crooked are definitely more in line with the way they should be. If you look from the front, the brackets themselves look like they are starting to line up correctly. The day they were put on, it looked as if the orthodontist didn't put them on evenly. But if you looked closely, you'd see that he put the bracket in the same spot on each tooth but because the teeth are crooked, look misaligned. What I don't know is how it's fixing my overbite issue.