(Post 69 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)
My dentist says I should be done with braces by Christmas! I’m through the part I was dreading most, the elastics. My teeth have been achy and sore and loose for five straight weeks thanks to them and I’ve been limited in the foods I could eat. As expected, the “braces diet” was good for my weight, but not so much for morale! So I decided to look for a visual reminder of how far I’ve come in the last ten months. I remembered that back in December, just after my consultation appointment, I had treated myself to a Reese’s peanut butter cup and taken a photo of my dental impression. So I picked one up today while running errands so I could compare my dental imprint then from now. I think this picture says it all!
My dentist/orthodontist here in Mérida is Dr. Javier Cámara Patrón of Quality Dental. I can’t recommend him or his team too highly. They really care about their patients, do excellent work, and their rates are affordable. I’ll have spent about 9,000 pesos in total by the time this is done, and the most I had to shell out at one time was 2,000 pesos. That’s about 425USD or 550CAD total for the entire year-long treatment. I could never have had this work done in Canada and, like Dr. Susana in Mazatlán told me, it’s not just a cosmetic issue. It’s helping with the wear on my teeth. It has also eliminated some pain on the left side from all the work I have had done on the top back teeth so that after nearly 15 years of only chewing on my right side, I now chew all but super hard foods on the left side as well. I have also been plagued most of my adult life by random shooting jaw pain that appears to have been resolved!
I am glad you explained these photos here because even though I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, I liked them on Instagram! LOL
Happy your braces are doing the job and you sure would not have been able to have the work done in the U.S. either!
Those photos are so self-explanatory to me and to some people that you were just, like, wow!!! that I’m so surprised by how many more people were, like, WTF, Rae?!
That is wonderful progress with braces. Now you can smile with a new confidence – but smiles are not seen much these days as we have them covered with masks. But hopefully one day soon that too shall pass.
The most important person who needs to see this smile sees it every day in the mirror. 😉
As a kid I had braces for 5 years. Yes, 5 years! My dad was military and we moved around some orthodontist were better than others. When I finally got them off I didn’t wear the retainer like I should have and now my teeth could probably use braces again. My best hint to you is wear your retainers at night like you’re supposed to.
I had braces for years as a kid as well and had to discontinue treatment because of my allergic reaction to the materials used. So that’s one of the reasons I needed further treatment as an adult and why that treatment has been so quick and relatively easy.
That said, it might make you feel better to learn that even if you had worn your retainer as long as you should have, your teeth would have still moved. All the research I did said that kids who had braces grow into adults who need braces because the teeth move again as you grow. So don’t feel so bad about it!
I’m investigating a “permanent” retainer rather than one that I have to remove.