During the past week, my left central incisor has moved further back, to the point where it was hitting against my bottom teeth while I was eating and even sometimes when I wasn’t. That was quite painful, as it jolted the tooth. This was the position last night:
Today I went back to see Dr Wozniak so he could assess the front teeth and see if I am approaching the end of treatment. When he took the extra attachment off the left one, it didn’t ping back as it did last time – I assume because it had had longer to settle. Because it was too far back, he physically pushed it forward until it lined up with the right one and then he asked me if I’d be happy with that as the final position – which I was, as it was the perfect straight line that we’ve been chasing for a while!
In order to fix the position, Dr Wozniak fitted a temporary wire to the back of the central incisors. It’s quite low on the teeth, but it’s only going to be there for eight days until my next appointment. I can’t feel it too much but my tongue does touch it. It had to be shaved until I wasn’t biting down on it.
After that, it was time to take the mould for the plastic retainer that I’ll have to wear at night. Dr Wozniak inserted a tray full of silicone into my mouth and pushed it onto my top jaw. That was fine, but when it was time to pull it back off… Christ, the pain! That was the single most painful thing that’s been done to my teeth throughout this whole experience. It really had to be yanked hard to pull it off – at one point, I even thought it was completely stuck and that was it, I’d have silicone on my teeth forever! The sensitive teeth towards the front felt like they were being ripped from my head, and I cried out involuntarily when the pain got too much. Tears were streaming down my face and all the way down to my neck, my hands were clenched, and I was twisting away to try to escape the pain. It was horrendous. My teeth throbbed for about half an hour afterwards!
When he inspected the mould, I was so relieved when he said it was good and could be sent off to the lab. I don’t think I’d have survived a second attempt…
I was expecting my teeth to have moved again once he finally got the silicone off, but the wire did its job and held them in place.
I’ve now got another appointment booked in 8 days’ time to have my brackets removed (yay!), cleaning and polishing done, and filing of the central incisor which now has an angled bottom. I will also have the temporary wire removed and the permanent one bonded on. This will all apparently take around an hour so I’m not looking forward to it, although I am of course looking forward to being finished! That will be two weeks under the six months that was predicted, which is really good.
I have no pictures from today yet as I’ve kept my lips as still as possible – but will update soon!
UPDATE:
Here are some pics finally –
Journey to Straight Teeth 