The Tooth Is Out There

The last week has seen a return to pain, primarily in my bottom front teeth as they move forward. However things seem to now be slowing as my incisors struggle to get past my bottom canines, which like my top canines, ever so slightly face forward on an angle. I suspect this is because when they came in during puberty I was well and truly a midget, there was no room for them and they did what they could to reach towards the light. Now I believe there is room, they're just on the wrong angle. However I imagine this will be one of the tougher hurdles to overcome and expect to have rubber bands strapped on the next time I see the dentist. Then again, if the incisor on the right hand side of my face and wriggle past its pesky canine companion, there may not be a need for that. It's certainly the tooth I'm keeping the closest eye on at the moment and arguably the tooth that's so far moved the furthest. As for my top teeth, the resulting movement of my two front te...

It took 18 days for me to break my braces. Life has been very full recently, the stress has been getting to me and I'm fairly certain of that because I bit clean through my braces in my sleep. I broke two brackets and woke myself up in the process. Both broken brackets are on my bottom molars, one I seriously destroyed, the other is still attached to the wire and sitting in my mouth, ineffective, but out of the way. When science says teeth are harder than steel, they are not messing about.

Brushing my teeth is a challenge. Probably a side effect of this dry mouth nonsense, but my teeth rarely feel properly clean. I'm on to my third kind of toothbrush as I look to reach in and around the new framework and actually get the teeth clean. You don't really realise how just eating normally and chewing your food actually removes any build up on your teeth throughout the day. Now that I'm on an all-mush diet and chewing is out of the question, I notice it completely. I have always been a fastidious teeth cleaner and I brush pretty hard with a medium strength brush. Now I'm pretty concerned about doing damage to my braces and am having to reign in my usual gusto while still attempting to clean teeth that feel dirtier than ever. The result? Long periods spent brushing my teeth and some old techniques from childhood which have returned now that I can no longer just scrub thoroughly. A certain level of precision and finesse has returned to the way I brush m...

There have been some first signs of movement. Perhaps not entirely as desired, but all part of the process I assume. What seems to be happening, which isn't the easiest to gauge ( check out the pictures here if you're really interested , it actually seems like more of an exercise in proper lighting) - is that (I'm getting there) my bottom front teeth are moving forward and my top front teeth are moving to the side. I actually thought I'd see more movement from my snaggletooth, as it has room to move back into naturally, but it hasn't budged at all. Likewise I thought my bottom two front teeth would line up first, but the most movement has come from the tooth behind them which has meant the front two have maintained the status quo in terms of formation. I was never actually that fussed about how my bottom teeth looked, they're the same as Will Ferrell's and he seems to be doing alright. So unconcerned in fact that unlike my upper teeth, I realise I...