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Wow, I didn’t realize that they use pre-made arch wires in specific shapes.

I guess this is just another part where an orthodontist is like an artist, or at least like a plastic surgeon: s/he has to make a decision which arch shape suits the patient best, as it affects the underlying bone structure and in the end, how the face looks.

I’m getting vertical “smoker’s lines” on my top lip. I noticed them just in the past 2 weeks. I think it’s due to 1) drinking all my dark drinks (coffee, tea, red wine) through a straw – that’s some serious puckering I do; 2) force-closing my mouth. Since my bite is pretty open at the moment, I have to make an effort to keep it closed.

Now I’m forcing myself to relax the mouth and keep it open all the time. This forms a yucky film on the brackets and I’m having to wipe and clean them throughout the day, but hopefully the lips will relax a bit.

I’m pretty sure it’s mostly because of drinking through a straw, and I stopped using them. Of course, my ligatures (elastics) will stain much quicker but for the moment I’m not too worried: my next adjustment is in a week!

We were at the mall, when I decided to have a sandwich before a long shopping spree. Of course a good cleaning is due after a meal, so I rinsed a lot with mineral water and used my Stimu-Dent pick (totally disgusted by mall bathrooms and you can’t pay me enough to brush my teeth there).

I love my Stim-U-Dents, they are really handy, but I wasn’t careful and popped an elastic from the implant. This is actually the first time it happened to me. I usually clean teeth with a mirror and poke around carefully. So instead of shopping we rushed off to the ortho office – without calling in first! I only did it because I knew for sure they were open today and my emergency wouldn’t take long.

Frankly, I was happy I had an excuse to go there, because a wire started hurting me a couple of weeks ago – my teeth have shifted and about 4mm(!) was sticking out and poking my cheek. It takes me about an hour to get to the ortho office (the closest one of the 2 they operate), and it just didn’t seem like enough of a reason to waste half a day. It hurt, sure, but by now I’m used to dealing with all sorts of minorly irritating types of pain. Plus the wire sticking out is not something that can affect my tooth movement as far as I know. However an elastic out of place can mess up the teeth. Having 2 reasons, one of them important, was enough to convince me to go in for an emergency.

To be fair, it’s not that bad. In the first 2 months of my treatment I had 6 emergency appointments. Now that I’m a year into the treatment, I rarely have any emergencies at all.

A tragedy averted: wire trimmed and elastic put back on. Took a total of 43 seconds (plus an hour to get back). Sigh… Ah the trouble we go to for health and beauty.