My Experience with Braces

When I was 10, my mother took me to get a checkup at the dentist. They reffered me to he orthodontist and that's how my story starts. Around that time I could hardly eat, and was really thin, Doing my own research, it turns out hat I had popping jaw syndrome. Yes, whenever I tried to open or close my mouth, it made a popping sound (like your popping a knuckle) At first, it wasn't painful, but it eventually progressed to he point I could hardly eat. The condition forms when a disk that sits in your mouth slides out of place, the snap is made when you move your jaw and it snaps back into position.

Luckily, I could be fixed, my over bite would be corrected, and my teeth would be lined up. So starting my middle school year in September, I got spacers. Spacers give them more wiggeroom come time for the actually brace part. They weren't bad, it did feel like my mouth had run a 5k marathon, but they were livable. They did, however, make my band life painful. I played the trumpet and, after every session, I could hardly talk. Next was the braces

These were fun, I could chose the band's that would be placed on them, and thankfully, the people their would abide my request to have every tooth rotate between several different colors for me.

However, my so far good experience with braces was about to change from then on. I was to be fitted with TAD's or, a temporary anchorage device for short. These are small screws, a couple of centimeters long, that would be drilled into my back upper jaw and connected to my front lower jaw with rubberbands and a metal spring. Well, I'm theory his would pull my lower jaw backwards, effectively correcting , my overbight, but that was better said then done.

"Keep your mouth open," he said as his assistant pricked my gum with a needle of novacain. I laid awake for the procedure, after waiting a few moments he moved forward and pressed the small screw to my back jaw. With a little handhold screwdriver, he broke through the surface of my gum and drilled away into my bone.

"Any pain you feel should be pressure, mostly it'll be sore but it'll go away in a couple of hours" he gently reminded me as the screw went deeper into my mouth. Well, if it was only pressure, then a hurricane is just a windstorm. I was writhing in pain, as I heard the squeak of metal through bone. It was too much, something was wrong, he assumed hat the assistant had failed to hit the nerve, so he called her back over. It didn't work this time either but he finished away, me being under absolutely no anesthetic.

A few days later, a boy elbowed me in my mouth cause the screw to become loose and dislodged. It wiggled around and the spring in my mouth yanked the broken screw forward. With the screw out of place, he metal doing dug into my jaw, causing the whole left side of my mouth to become inflamed and swell up around it.

They were closed for a couple of days when that happened, so I had to wait almost a week for the screw to be removed. My gum bled as the metal was removed and I had to wait a couple of days until my mouth healed enough and the swelling was gone before they could reapply the screw.

The anesthetic failed that time to.

It was a horrible time for me, my popping jaw was almost completely gone though. Every time I walked into the orthodotist, I'd have pretty bad panic attacks, I lost trust in them ever since one day he tightened he screw without warning, I never got anesthetic for those times either.

My jaw boned seemed weaker after that, the screws on either side of my mouth were easily dislodged. And they never were able to kill my nerve with painkiller. I still have quite the phobia walking into any teeth care facility since. Talking to my mom now, she tells me that they probably never hit the nerve at all, it seems that a a genetic trait I picked up from my mother was an odd nerve placement.

However, I'd recommend braces still. One bad orthodontist practitioner doesn't cancel out the benefits. My experience is as bad as they come, contrarily, my sister had a great experience there.