7 MONTHS POST-OP!

I haven't been posting at all because really nothing was happening.  My orthodontist has been working on fine tuning. Two days ago he finally rebracketed my front 6 teeth for me after forgetting for a few months (he's very forgetful). So, now my teeth are moving the way that I want them to. At this point, I feel my bite should be perfect but it still feels a little off, I think one tooth is hitting awkwardly, so I have to talk to him about that at my next appointment.

Also, my canines and laterals are slightly angled back making my left canine on the bottom and my left lateral on the top hit when i bring my bite forward to nibble on food. Which is very annoying, hopefully he can fix that.

I'm really excited to be out of braces soon, but I don't want to rush it. I want them to be as close to perfect as they can be. I feel he's trying to rush me out of them, because this month will be my estimated treatment time, 24 months. But in my opinion, you pay for the final result, so an orthondist needs to make you happy with the final result.

Anyway, hopefully they'll be off by June,  for sure. :)

4 MONTHS POST-OP!

In six days I will be 4 months post-op, I can't believe it's been so long since my surgery. There have been a few changes in my teeth in the past three months. There were some changes that I am not too fond of. One of the things I do not like is, since there is a different wire on, my teeth have slightly angled in, it is mainly my canines that are angled. Also, the left side is more angled in than the right. My mid-line isn't perfect but he said with tooth size variation there will be no way to fix it without messing up my bite. (It is good on the top teeth, but my bottom is off).

They said my bite is pretty perfect (I have a 2mm over-jet now, which 1mm-2mm is apparently perfect) we just have to do final touches now. So, we are on to the final phase of my braces treatment!! My next appointment we are doing an x-ray of my teeth so we can re-bracket and get the roots straight. Hopefully I will be getting my braces off before Christmas, and if not that soon then before my birthday, for sure (January 16th). On January 14th, I will be 2 years in braces, wow. Time goes by quickly.

There was one huge change in my face with my surgery, my face looks so much shorter. Not in a bad way though! Before my surgery, I had a little bit of "long face" which I never liked, my face always looked off to me. But, now instead of my face being very oval, my face is more heart-shaped like my mother's face. :D

1 YEAR POST-OP!

I missed my 1 year post so it's more like 1 year ... half month. Haha!

So, today I got the news that, despite my surgeon being booked until he retires on June 30th, someone has cancelled their surgery and I got in. I will be having another jaw surgery NEXT WEEK (June 9th). I don't know 100% what he will be doing, but I do know that he will be taking away my gummy smile, my overbite will be gone for good and he will be bringing my chin forward to reduce my weak chin.

I am pretty excited and will be updating pictures everyday of this surgery :)

11 MONTHS POST-OP!

In 6 days it will be 11 months since my surgery, I am still surprised at how fast my initial recovery was. My orthodontist says I am getting really close to my next surgery. My first surgery was SARPE, to expand my upper jaw, my next surgery will be most likely double jaw. They will be reducing my gummy smile, getting rid of my over jet and moving my chin forward to reduce weak chin.

I am very nervous about this next surgery as my jaw will be wired for a month and I work at Tim Hortons so that will be an issue for when I return to work. I know I will most likely be able to speak a little bit, but other than that I should be okay.

Here is a picture of my teeth today ^^^^^^^^^^ as you can see my teeth are not perfect yet! I find my top teeth both top and bottom are towards the right a lot. For some reason my orthodontist does not see this ... I hope I can get him to fix it. :P Also, my right front tooth is out a little farther than the other one. I know I still have almost a year left, but I am still very nervous!!!1

8 MONTHS POST-OP!

Now, I am a little over 8 months post-op for my SARPE surgery, and 1 year with braces. My orthodontist says I am going to be getting ready for my next surgery very soon. I'm not 100% sure what the surgeon is doing with the next surgery until my consultation later this year. :) Oh, and I turned 20 on the 16th of January!

Here are some updated pictures!

0 turns          vs             38 turns             vs             1 month after turning            vs             8 months post -op

Me before braces and surgery.

Me now!!! :D 8 months post-op SARPE 

7 MONTHS POST-OP!

Life with braces is super non-exciting right now. My very top back bracket on the right is sticking into my cheek ALWAYS. I have, literally, a hole in my cheek now. In October, I got my expander out, finally. My mouth feels amazingly spacious. I love not having metal on the roof of my mouth. The SARPE was totally worth every second of worry. :)

At my last ortho appointment (Tuesday Nov, 3rd), the orthodontist said I am approaching being ready for my next surgery, which will be my double-jaw. He says he'll give me 5-6 months notice when everything is in the right spot. I am really hoping the surgery will be in the summer time, so I don't have to miss any of third year in September.

I'm ... not very excited for this surgery though. Mainly because I have this really big fear about having metal plates in my face forever ... but I know they can come out when the jaw has healed. I will definitely make sure that this can happen before I go into surgery. 

I'll post some updated pictures soon. My orthodontist will be mad at me, I got my lip pierced. I did get bioplast tho, so it's not as damaging really. :P

Update: Open Bite!

I just realized today that my open bite is SO SMALL since my surgery!!!!! Here's a picture. :)

3 MONTHS POST-OP!

My gap is now closed!!! Other then that to be honest, nothing since my last post has been very exciting - appointment wise. My appointment that just recently went by all the ortho did was change my wire. I still have my expander in and he gave me no say in when he'll be taking it out. But yes, my gap is now closed. My front tooth still needs to turn completely around to be straight, so it looks a little off right now. Haha.

This was July 4th after I got my chipped tooth shaped.
(left front tooth)

Taken August 7th.
This is when I really started loving my smile.

This one was taken today! Gap completely closed.

Wow. It's Been a While! 2 Months Post-Op

It's been so long since I posted anything and a lot has happened! Since I stopped turning the expander, I got my braces back on and I've had those back on for ... 3 ish weeks now. My next appointment is not until 3 more weeks (6 weeks in total) but my gap is closing so fast!!! I can't believe how easy this whole experience with my SARPE surgery has been. Some other things I've noticed are my gums are getting healthier again and my teeth are getting really straight. Also, my front teeth that were flared because of the narrow arch are becoming not flared any more, which is super exciting to meee. I believe I still have some swelling in my cheeks and lip area because my lip keeps doing this weird thing when I smile, right where my little lip tie used to be. What happens is the under side of my lip stays down when I smile big.

Thankfully most of the time you can't see it - even if it turns
out to be permanent. :D (Gap getting smallerrr, yayyy!!!) <3

Holy Gap, Batman!!! 2 Weeks Post SARPE Already?

Wow, it's already been 2 weeks? Really? I remember when I thought the surgery was never going to come!!! So, as of right now, I am at 15 turns of the expander and I have 3 more to go. I gave my bite a good look and I feel like the orthodontist is going to decide to add a few more turns because it's not close to the normal bite yet. My teeth right now, are right on top of each other, so that means they'll need to go out another half of a tooth width. I'm really excited about the changes so far, and I'm even more excited about the final palate width. :D My next orthodontist appointment is on Monday!

0 Turns vs. 15    

Some things I am not so happy about: The shape of my upper lip is different, but I think it's mainly because of the remnants of swelling left over. I still have no feeling in my gums yet, which slightly scares me. Under my upper lip (where I had a little lip tie) feels like there is a little piece of food stuck up there, all the time. I am really hoping this feeling will go away, I think it may be a little bit of "stiff/tight" feeling left over. Oh, and there is one tiny piece of my lip tie left over that I need to get removed now. :)

10 Days Post SARPE

So, today I am at 10 days post SARPE. Everything has been going good so far - almost all my swelling is gone and most of my stitches have dissolved. There were only two things I really had issues with. 1. Sleep - I found for the first few nights, I would sleep two hours then wake up (repeating) ALL night. I would also wake up in pain with tons of swelling even though I slept sitting up. :( ... 2. Eating - Argh. It is so hard to stay on that liquid diet. I did well for five days, then I had to start eating some coleslaw and potato salad (because I was SO hungry). Which I had no issues with because they didn't need much chewing, if any.

I do still have a really big bruise on my left cheek though. I feel like people think I got beat up or something. :P

I went to my orthodontist on Thursday, May 22, and I started turning my expander that day. He has me doing 2 turns a day for 6 days then 1 turn a day for 6 days. I am at 9 turns right now and I will be at 10 tonight. OH! Back to work today. Yayyy. Hehe.

This is today 9 turns of the expander. :D  My lips are back to normal. YAY!!!

Surgical Experience (now at 2 days post SARPE)

It happened!!!!!! The whole experience seems kind of blurry to me right now. I waited with my mother at the hospital for my surgery from 9:45 to 1:30. That's a long time to wait dressed up in all that beautiful hospital attire. My surgeon was super nice tho - the resident surgeon was SUPER cute also. Oh my gosh! Dr. James Brady. He looked like he was straight out of a 1950's hospital soap opera. <3

The surgery took about 2 hours to complete, then it was recovery room time. I think I was in recovery for another 2 hours. When I woke up the pain was really bad in the initial incision area. I had to ask for a lot of pain medication and something for the nauseous feeling I had. When I was finally (mostly) awake they sent me to my room. Once I was there, I DID throw up some blood. That wasn't very pleasant. I was half out of it still, so all I really remember saying is, "Ahh, that's so groosss." Haha ... 

This picture is of me approximately --- 19 hours post SARPE. I slept from 1:30pm until 8am (which is when that picture was taken). I actually felt so good the day after surgery. I had minimal swelling and no numbness except for one little section above the right side of my upper lip. I can smile and laugh. The main thing the doctor told me is that I have to do mouth exercises (fake smile, fake kiss lol) so that my collagen fibers don't grow back inflexible in my incision. I'm also on a wonderful liquid diet. So far, all i've eaten is soup and ensure -- I had a milk shake at McDonald's. Man, this is filling ... NOT. I don't think I've lost any weight yet. But we'll see later on. (OH! Really happy I have my braces on already, so people know for sure I'm going through orthodontic treatment) 

As for the expansion, I don't start turning it until my next ortho appointment on Thursday - which will be 6 days post SARPE. Wish me luck!

Little gap from just the surgery. You can see the little bit of swelling. 

Again, not a cute angle but you can see where my little gap is, 

and you can see how swollen my lip actually is !

My mother said I look like a cartoon character in this one. So, I had to share it. XD

Getting SO Close

So, it's been a while since I've posted because there hasn't really been that much going on lately with my braces treatment.

Here's an update. :)

April 22nd: I got those awesome little blue spacers put in-between my teeth to make room for my expander. These gave me some hassle because they kept falling out once my teeth separated enough.

April 28th:  I got my impression done for the fit of the expander. I also got fitted for bands.

May 6th: This is the day I actually got my expander put in. It turned out to be a very frustrating day for me. All I wanted to do was eat, drink and swallow properly, but, it's kind of impossible at first. All you can do is sit there with a mouth full of saliva. (Not cute lol) Oh! Not to mention not being able to talk properly. I found the words that were the hardest to say had the sound "e" and "u". I work at Tim Horton's so you can imagine how it sounded when I said "Hi, thank you for choosing Tim Horton's, my name is Megan, how may I help you." Haha! Also, one of the band brackets is hitting my bottom teeth and it's making my open bite look way worse.

>They finally changed my bottom wire (after 4 months of the hygienist saying it was only on for 4 weeks). FINALLY. I was starting to wonder if they were ever going to change it. I had to tell my orthodontist myself that the wire had been on for 4 MONTHS. :/

Today is May 12th, and my surgery is so close. I'm heading down on the bus on Tuesday, May 13th and my surgery is on Friday, May 16th. Oh my god. I'm so nervous.

Here are my updated picture so far (4 months in braces):

^^^ EXPANDER YAY XD (awkward pictures omg lol)

Metal Mouth

Two days ago (Feb 11th) I went in for my second orthodontics appointment to get my top braces on. Now the term metal mouth is accurate. Haha! I am finding the top braces are hurting my cheeks a lot more then the bottoms did, it feels like someone is scrapping something sharp along the inside of your mouth. How tolerant I am to the pain may also have something to do with the fact that I have bronchitis and a cold. :(

So, I got my top braces on and then later found out that I am going ahead with my SARPE surgery on May 16th. This is nerve racking because I have to travel 6 hours away from home on a bus to get it done. I realize how much pain and misery I will be in, but I feel it's worth it because I will finally have a beautiful wide palate. My ortho originally wanted me to have both upper and lower jaw surgery but that made me slightly nervous because my body has a pretty bad habit of rejecting everything that comes in contact with me. It's so bad that I can't have titanium piercings and I reject surgical stitches.

Here is me with a full METAL MOUTH

Bottom Braces

On January 14th I got my bottom braces on. I realized that day that I have pretty bad anxiety when feeling "trapped" -- which is exactly what getting braces on felt like to me (for the most part). When the braces first go on, there is no pain at all, and the pain doesn't creep in  for the next few hours. But overall, it doesn't really start full force until the following day. This is when orthodontic wax will become your new best friend. But really, you get used to them pretty quickly. After 3 or 4 days, I didn't even need the wax any more. P.S. They wouldn't give me colored elastics this day. :( My ortho doesn't normally do colors with speed braces (which is what I have). They said they would give me some when I got my top brackets on, just to make me happy. :) hehe.

Before The Metal

Throughout middle and high school, everyone was getting braces, and since then, it's all I've ever wanted. Although I wanted it badly,  I never really thought it would happen, especially since I am 19 years old now. 

I found out about two years ago that I have something called a tongue thrust (tongue thrust is the common name of orofacial muscular imbalance, A human behavioral pattern in which the tongue protrudes through the anterior incisors during swallowing). Basically, I was addicted to my soother as a baby, and my mouth just never learned the mature version of swallowing, making my teeth stick out. FUN. xD I also have a cross-bite and some crowding -- causing some teeth to be awkwardly turned. Eeek.

Here are my before pictures:

Profile shot ^^

Teeeeth shots! ^^ I know these are frightening.

They even scare me, but at least they're white.

Narrow upper palate, good width for ^^

lower palate but some crowding.

Oh, this is me pre-braces NOT at the orthodontist.