Week 8 continued - Elastic/Rubber Bands

Week 8 with power chains and elastic bands

So the first night with the elastic bands and... it wasn't so successful. In fact they were so uncomfortable I couldn't sleep with them in. I'm a really light sleeper and it takes me a long time to get to sleep, so if I'm even the slightest bit uncomfortable it's difficult for me.

The bands really lock my jaws together. I can still speak but I obviously can't move my mouth and lips as much as I want. I get really dry lips and I constantly have to put lip balm on them, so that means I'm used to rubbing my lips together to rub in the lip balm. I can't do that while they're there. And they hurt. They don't just hurt my teeth but my my jaws and cheeks feel like they're straining and sore. The relief I felt when I took them off the last night was massive. Having the braces in for the first time was not nearly so bad as this.
So I'm wearing them during the day while I'm writing this, to get my jaw used to the feel of having them on. I've read from other threads that the pain subsides once your jaws and face muscles get used to the feeling. This article from the actual Damon System website recommends you just 'power through' it, so that's what I'm doing!

The pain of having the new wire means I again can't eat so much. Even a Kinder Bueno bar, one of the softest sweets you can chew, is painful for my back teeth.

Since last week I've also been suffering from some mysterious stomach infection, so yogurt and milk, even soya, give me painful stomach aches. As do bananas (no smoothies). Toast I can't chew, and I think vegetable soup would also not be so great for my stomach (I'm vegetarian, so chicken soup is also out). So what's left is porridge (oatmeal). At least it's cheap and quick to cook.

Day 14

2 weeks with Damon Braces

So today marks two weeks with the Damon braces on. They feel fine and I'm even chewing a bit more. I am able to bite into soft things using my front teeth, but I prefer to use my back teeth.
I do notice I'm still trying to grind my teeth in the early mornings and because of the brackets I can't. My mouth keeps trying and then my brain realizes that the brackets are there. Perhaps it's possible that I'll even stop trying after a while, who knows.

Today I was in a bit of a panic because I've been using wax on this one bracket and it's been covering part of my gums, and today the gums were looking a bit odd. So just in case, I went out to the pharmacy to buy medical gel to treat gingivitis. It wasn't hurting but if it ever started to, I know that this gel would sort it out. I ended up getting a little on my lips as well, and they went so numb. The gum seems to be looking ok now, but I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days.
My bottom front teeth are ever so slowly moving. I notice because the wire gets slightly straighter. The two teeth either side of the centre bottom teeth are being pulled out from behind those two. Before the braces, I couldn't feel all of the backsides of these two centre teeth, because the teeth either side were kind of slotted in behind them. Now I'm able to brush the entire back side of those centre teeth.
Only one more week until my next appointment, I'm pretty excited to hear if they will do anything next!

Day 2

Not the greatest picture, but here you can see what they look like, and also the tooth that was causing me and my smile the most irritation. This is the second day of wearing Damon Clear. I wish I'd taken a picture the first day, because then you could have really seen how those four brackets on the lower jaw were squeezed really tightly together and they're already evening out

Feeling

So far I haven’t had much trouble but the feeling is weird, like wearing another set of teeth over your original ones. I have ceramic brackets over the front 6 teeth on the upper jaw and ceramic brackets on the front 6 teeth on the lower jaw, the rest of them are these silver metal colour. One silver metal bracket was giving me a bit of trouble, rubbing against the inside of my lower cheek, but using the wax the dentist gave me has made this problem better.

Pain

Apart from the one bracket rubbing against my cheek, it hasn’t really been painful, but I probably won’t be able to eat anything solid for the next few days, because the pressure on my teeth feels a bit too much if I touch them. And also I don’t want to have the hassle of having a major clean after just snacking on something. I’m hoping it will have a positive knock-on effect on my diet (I usually snack on a lot of sweets at work – this is now almost impossible!).

Smiling

It’s also a bit difficult smiling. I feel I have to either smile very wide (to get my lips out of the way), or not at all. And the braces have given my mouth a slight kind of ‘trout pout’ appearance. But I hope that as the teeth straighten out that this will get better.

Brushing

Brushing has not really been much of a problem, it is a little painful when I brush that upper tooth that has the receding gumline, but I try to avoid the gum as much as possible and just stick to brushing the bracket and the tooth enamel.

I have to say the first day, I did feel like this character ‘Cleetus’ from the Simpsons. Although my front two teeth did not stick out at all before the braces, having the brackets on there (the ceramic brackets are slightly larger than the normal silver metal), made me feel a bit like there were these two huge boulders there! But the second day, I’m getting used to the feeling – it really does get better!

Movement

I really don’t think I’m going crazy, perhaps it’s just the new look and feel of having the braces on my teeth, but examining my teeth it seems they have already moved just slightly. Usually when I ran my tongue around the inside of my bottom row of teeth, the front four were very crowded. Now I can feel with my tongue they are evening out a little bit. It’s really fantastic to feel like you’re having results almost immediately!