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Not much happened at the 5th adjustment, it was probably the shortest one ever! Elastics were changed, bends added to the wire and implant ties are still the same. And I still haven’t gotten my teeth cleaned, I just didn’t have the time.

This is my mouth maximally closed. I still have the “bite turbos” that don’t allow contact between the jaws, but it seems to me I no longer need them, the bite is open as it is. Check out the left side view:

My last (#8, wisdom) tooth is not braced. They added in a bend in the wire to even out the position of the #6 tooth – the one right after the extraction spot. You can see I really don’t need the blue bumps anymore, my teeth are not in contact anywhere, except at the very back. They bucked and are now in a weird arch. At least the spaces at the bottom seem to be closing if not quickly, but steadily.

After they put in the implants, I had to rinse with Peridex again. Here’s a pic of some seriously gunky teeth after 2 weeks of rinsing twice a day:

I’m so glad I held off on the cleaning: there’s just no way I could maintain the teeth after Peridex and would have to see the hygienist again! I tried to obsessively clean around each bracket with a proxy brush, flat large toothpick, thin round toothpick, tried getting between the powerchains and the wire… all that exhausting work for nothing. My teeth still look like I never clean them.

As for the bite, it’s opening up more and my upper jaw has now shifted to the right so much that my face looks crooked. When I look at myself in the mirror, it seems okay. I must have adjusted. But when I see a picture of myself, I freak out. That’s one asymmetric face! The 2 things keeping me sane are: 1) like I already said, I don’t see it every time I look in the mirror; 2) I realize it’s temporary and will get better. Hopefully soon.

Because of my very open bite, it’s now hard to keep my mouth closed (and shut, too – I keep talking about braces to anyone who listens!). I started sleeping with open mouth, and I’m feeling the side-effects: dry mouth in the morning obviously, I don’t rest well and feel tired all the time, and my heart started aching! Also dry mouth can cause cavities to develop. And long-term mouth-breathing can cause facial deformities and nasal issues. This is just bad all around!

A couple of times I made myself stay semi-conscious, waking up at least 5 times during the night to close my mouth. This was a lousy way to get some quality rest. I’m going to find a mechanical way to keep my mouth closed at night, this is just too exhausting.