Day 1

Ok so I lie, its actually day 2... but I couldnt face it yesterday, I was feeling far too sorry for myself!! The whole fitting process was not that bad really, apart from having to sit with my mouth open for about an hour!! (Much harder than you could imagine!)

The process involved sanding of the backs of my teeth, so that the brackets would stick better... this literally involved a mini sand spray shooting into my mouth and roughening the surface of the teeth. The weirdest thing were the water jets and sucky pipes which were then used to clean the sand out of my mouth whilst I just sat back in the chair! I had imagined lots of gargling and spitting of sand, but this was not the case at all... it reminded me of being at the hairdressers in a way sitting back in the chair while everyone runs around you! So then came the fitting of the brackets themselves, I was strapped into a nifty little device that kept my mouth open and sucked out all of the spit in my mouth so it stayed dry whilst everything was stuck in place. Not the most comfortable in the world, but painless nonetheless! Then came fiddling, cutting, twiddling of various bits and bobs whilst the wire was put into place and voila!

Immediately after it felt strange, I tried to talk and sounded a lot like sylvester the cat (I tawt i taw a puddy tat!) so I decided against speaking any more for the time being until I got home to test it out on my own!! Well I got home, talked to myself in the mirror a bit, had a good old poke around inside my mouth and then had a good old cry!! I think it was the emotion of the day overall really... finally taking the step towards fixing something that had caused me years of grief, the worry that it might not be the right thing after all - especially seeing as it is only compromise treatment rather than ideal and of course I was well aware that I sounded ridiculous!!! I had been prepared for all this, but it didnt help! On the bright side I had no pain at all, either from the teeth themselves or the rubbing of the brackets inside my mouth. I had heard horror stories of shredded tongues and ulcers so I was pleasantly suprised in that respect at least!

However I couldnt shake the worries over my speech, I immediately found myself thinking what would happen if I still sound like this when I go back to work.... I have to speak a lot as part of my job, and certainly not the easiest client group in the world...and all of my worries and insecurities piled up and got the better of me!!

Then as the hours went by, it also started to hurt a lot more which only made me feel worse! Still no pain in relation to my tongue/gums etc but real aching from my actual teeth, I assume as a result of the pressure from the braces and the pull on them to move into the right place. Now overall I could deal with that, as it reassured me that they were doing their job! However just before bedtime, on trying to clean my teeth I reached breaking point! Cue crying fit number 2!!! I could not for the life of me figure out how floss with braces on, and i cant describe the pain that seemed to result from trying to clean/floss/check out the wires in a mirror and poke out anything that shouldnt be there as part of my new bedtime routine! Not fun at all! And neither was the realisation that I would now be doing this at least 3 times a day for the forseeable future!! But all that was left to do was pull myself together, take a max strength ibuprofen (that seemed to help ease the ache!) and stick on an episode of SATC to cheer me up!! Needless to say, it was NOT the one with miranda and the braces lol!!