Easter Braces

It seems like it has been ages, but this is what it is like with braces. It is not a quick fix (despite what some people say!) On Friday, 8 March Dr Ward did my first full adjustment on my lower arch. He took the old wire out and put a new wire in. This is done to progress the treatment to the next stage. The first stage of lingual treatment is to align the teeth. My adjustment took about 15 minutes to complete. My teeth felt tight immediately and about 3 hours later... they began throbbing! I would say it was a similar discomfort to a tooth ache or when you touch a bruise. I didn't have to take any pain relief that day, but at 5:00am on Saturday morning I was searching for the Paracetamol. I ate mostly soft-ish foods over the weekend, it was still uncomfortable but I didn't need any further pain relief. Wednesday, 13 March had me visiting the great team at Grover and Marsden Dental Practice in Merstham. I needed to have my upper left second premolar extracted. It was a simple 15 minute procedure under a local anaesthetic. I was able to work through the day, it was a little uncomfortable but very bearable. We even had our team complete basic life support training in the afternoon! That evening I had softer food again - mash and fish fingers. It was made for me and as we all know, food always tastes better when you don't have to cook it yourself :) Finally, on Friday 15 March I had my fixed adjust on the upper arch. It was a similar process to the lower arch one week earlier, but Dr Ward also put a white filling material to mask the gap left by my extracted tooth. It would be noticeable if I was smiling, so it is a great interim solution before my teeth start to move to close the gap. This adjustment was MUCH more uncomfortable than lower. It is likely a combination of the change of wire and extraction only a couple of days apart, but WOW I felt it through the whole weekend. I took Paracetamol regularly through the weekend until Sunday. It is almost one week later and I am still on a soft food diet. That means no biscuits (what?!?), but there are cupcakes in the practice today and those will be ok! It kind of feels like like my teeth and gums are bruised. Next on the agenda is a fixed adjust in 6 weeks time. That will be exciting as I will move on to the next stage with a new and stronger wire. Until then, I just hope for less sensitivity so that I can carry on eating what I want. Please email or leave a comment on my blog page if you have any questions. Until next time,G.