Terrible Teeth! Let's Fix Them - Done with Braces! - Finland, FI

It's been nearly one year into my orthodontic treatment and I have a lot tell, so I will be doing several updates in the next few days rather than telling everything in the same post. But let me begin with telling something about myself and my starting situation.

I had been self-conscious about my teeth since I was a teen. My teeth were quite bad and I was (and still am) the perfect example of what happens, when you skip brushing your teeth and drink a lot of Coke. And eat a truckload of chocolate, every day. For some reason, my parents did not pay much attention to how I was taking care of my teeth when I was about under ten years old. We always had Coke in our fridge and my mother kept buying me candy, because I insisted to. Looking back now, I can't understand why my parents did not stop me from being such an idiot - that should have been their responsibility as parents, I think. A small child can't be assumed to control her own sugar consumption and oral hygiene. As a consequence of this negligence, I had my first cavity at the age of five. More and more followed until I was about 11-12 years old and started to show signs of sensibility. Continuous drinking of Coca-Cola had eroded my teeth, making them annoyingly sensitive and worn-out looking. Luckily, I didn't manage to ruin all my teeth, only the ones that erupted before I came to my senses.

In addition to all the erosion, my teeth also become crowded. I developed a deep bite, maybe partially because the dental erosion ate away the height of my molars. Unfortunately I don't have any real "before" pictures of my teeth, but I do have a set of pictures from the cast that was made from my teeth at the orthondontist before the beginning of the treatment. From the pictures you can see that my front teeth were crooked, my right canine was rotated and erupted too high from the gumline, my molars were undererupted (lower incisors were overerupted but you probably won't be able to see that) and when I bit down, my lower teeth nearly touched my palate. You can also see the ugly shape that my four upper front teeth took because of the erosion. This is especially clearly seen in the lateral incisors.

So I always wanted to fix my teeth. I was so ashamed of them! After seeing in one photo, taken when I was 14, how terrible they looked, I never smiled in photos again. I usually covered my mouth when smiling or tried to smile with my lips closed. When the years passed, my teeth also started to turn yellow from all the tea and coffee I had been drinking - despite the use of whitening toothpastes. My dream was to get my teeth straightened and whitened, and something done to their shape. But unfortunately it wasn't until I was 29 years old that I finally had the money to finance cosmetic treatments fot my teeth.

And so my journey begun. The orthodontics would be my first step. After some consultations I was told that best results for me would be achieved with traditional braces. The treatment time was estimated to be 18-24 months. In August 2013, the treatment started with the placing of four spacers between my upper molars. This was done to create space for the molars bands, to which the archwire would be attached. After two weeks, it was time for the brackets and a soft, thin nickel-titanium archwire to be put on my teeth. Cementing them to my teeth was quite unpleasant but not painful. The shock came afterwards. The ceramic brackets felt big and bulky against my upper lip, and the hooks that were in my molar bands bit into my cheeks every time i moved my mouth. I was wondering, how could I ever live with these things in my mouth! But then I thought that if twelve-year-old children can go through this, so can I. And I did. In a few weeks, I didn't even notice the braces anymore.

Of course, there was pain and discomfort. For a few days my teeth were sore and I would get blisters in my cheeks and lips because the brackets irritated them. But using the wax the orthodontist gave me helped a lot. I was very happy to be on my way to a prettier smile, that I would not have to be ashamed of!

With the pictures of the cast, here are also show some pictures from the first few weeks. Yes, my teeth are yellow, pay no attention to that yet! I will post more later.

When nine weeks (or about two months) had passed, it was time to place brackets on my lower jaw. The arch on my upper jaw had now expanded some and my lower arch needed to be be widened too. All my teeth were to be tilted a bit outwards, to correct the deep bite and to create room for them to align properly. During this time, I felt really strange when biting my teeth together, since my upper and lower jaw didn't match at all. Sometimes when I ate, my teeth clashed together in a weird angle, making a funny and loud sound. Even my boyfriend noticed it, and made fun of me. :D This lasted for quite a long time - I felt that my teeth started to fit perfectly togerther again as late as five months to the treatment, when I got my first elastics put in. But I'll come back to that later.

As I said earlier, I had had some pain after the initial placing of the wire and brackets (and btw, also the spacers made my teeth sore, but there was a delay of few days before the pain started), but when my ortho put the wire on my lower teeth and, at the same time, replaced my Ni-Ti wire with a thicker steel wire, my teeth were hurting for over a week and quite badly, actually. Eating was an agony for a while, since every one of my teeth now hurt (and inside my gums felt itchy!), not just the upper ones. However, normal over the counter pain killer helped a lot.

Before I had braces on my lower teeth, I hadn't realized how crookes and all ovet the place they had been. :D Somehow, the metal brackets on them really made them look worse. You might notice this on the picture I will attach to this post. At first, my ortho left the most misplaced tooth out of the archwire. On my next visit this tooth too was attached to the wire, and it shifted to its right place in a few hours! I was amazed! This shift is visible in the pictures too. Actually, all the lower teeth aligned beautifully in a matter of few weeks.

After five months, my treatment had progressed ro the point where correction of my bite with elastics could begin. Attached is a picture of my first elastics band, they are called "Rabbits" and they are made of latex. I had to use that day and night. This band was supposed to correct the position of one of my premolars, that was responsible fot putting my bite "off". It took only a few days before I noticed a vast improvement. Today, I'm still wearing elastics at night, but I will tell more about that in my future posts.

I was supposed to attach these pictures to the previous post. These are between 2 and 5 months of orthodontics treatment. The finnish text "7 viikkoa" in one of the pictures means "7 weeks", as in seven weeks in braces for the lower teeth, and four months from the beginning of the whole treatment.