Week 9

Week 9 with Damon Braces

I've been so busy the past week, I haven't had much time to write. In any case, there has not been so much to report over the last week. I began to get an ulcer the first few days of wearing elastics and as it got so much worse and more painful with the elastic bands rubbing against it all the time, I decided to stop wearing them altogether until the ulcer healed, so today has been the first time I've had them on in about a week, I think. It doesn't seem like my teeth have made major movements, so I can only hope that the bands will still be able to make the changes that my orthodontist is hoping to see by the next appointment. Speaking more about elastics, I've discovered this channel Ortho2 Systems on Youtube that has video demonstrations of how elastics move your teeth, how you should brush your braces, as well as a bunch of 3D videos, it's really cool!

Week 8 - Elastic Rubber Bands, Part 2. Rabbit and Chipmunk

So then, I did not in fact 'power through' as I said I was going to do. On Tuesday morning I rang my dentist to ask if I could wear them during the day instead, and the nurse told me to try again and if it really wasn't working, come in again and they would see what they could do about it.

Tuesday night I wore them a few hours before going to bed, and then also took a sedative and two painkillers (NOT to be recommended, although it really didn't do anything to me). Two hours after turning off the light, I buckled and took them out. The next day I went back and said it was just impossible for me to sleep with them in, so they gave me some more which are slightly bigger and told me I could wear them during the day as well. Ominously, she also said something about the idea of wearing them at night was to 'get used to them'. I'm crossing my fingers that I won't have to wear them longer than six weeks.

I wore them today at work. As I sleep about 8 hours, I can just as well do the same in the day, so it's not that I have to wear them the entire time. The newer, larger ones are much more comfortable, although around the hour 7 mark, my cheeks were starting to ache.

I found this useful article all about elastic bands with braces, and why they're so important. In the article it says that movement only occurs after 6-8 hours and if you take the bands off for more than 30 minutes your teeth won't move. I don't think I wearing them to move my teeth, but in any case I made sure not to spend too long eating.

Types of Elastic Bands

Elastic Bands: The Chipmunk and the Rabbit. The actual bands are above each packet.

Before I got the braces on, I watched a few Youtube Vlogs (and still do, in fact). One of them, TheMatlachChannel is really informative, and in this one, he talks about the elastic bands there are - Quail, Parrot and Ram. I don't know if it's different here in Europe, but the ones I've been given are 'Chipmunk' and 'Rabbit'. The 'Quail' and 'Chipmunk' look quite similar, but in the video the 'Parrot' band looks much larger in comparison to the 'Quail' and as you can see, the 'Rabbit' is not that much larger than the 'Chipmunk'. So I really don't know if there are a whole other bunch of bands out there that I've not seen, or whether elastics companies decided to market them differently in Europe.