another life blog

About 3 weeks and half ago, I had a full mouth of metal braces installed by Bancha. I was already wearing 1st molar anchor wrap thing on all four quadrant, so it didn’t take very long for him to glue some 10 brackets on my maxilla and 8 on my mandibular. Again, we’re trying to create wide enough of a space to stick in an implant about where I’m congenitally missing my mandibular lateral incisors.

Immediately after he was done and was time to check my bite, I knew it was off. I couldn’t bite down all the way! I asked, “is this right?! My maxillary right canine cusp was hitting the bracket that’s glued onto the lower right canine! He said, “eat soft food!” When I got home, I had a pork chop marinated and ready to cook ~ soon as I tried to take a bite, I knew I had to gave it away to Mo and Ricky. It’s true Mo, I forgot you couldn’t eat pork so frustrated and in pain that I couldn’t eat a lovely pork chop.

Days went by, and in that first week, I really didn’t feel any pain except when I tried to eat. I couldn’t bite down all the way, so much of my food I simply chop up into little pieces, pretend to “chew” a couple of times, and just swallow it. If I didn’t go through physiology and anatomy where they taught us that the stomach actually can digest everything we eat into juicy content that’s more blended than BlendTec Total Blender, I would really be just eating yogurt and porridge for that first week. Gradually, I ate harder and harder food - and within 2 weeks, I was able to eat and chew almost everything! The only problem was the hamster cheek pouching syndrome became 10x worse. Yes, I’m still afraid to use my tongue to grab food apical to the braces. Ricky says it wouldn’t be long until I could clean my teeth after meals easily - but… mmm, just not right now I think.

So after I began to eat practically everything again, my first accident happened just a few days after during my lunch break between Operative and Operative Dentistry on March 1st. Since we didn’t have a lot of time, I ordered Chinese for lunch. Though I knew the lady spoke Mandarin, I still order in English because some dishes, I simply can’t pronounce! So I ordered #18, Moo Goo Gai Pain lunch special. She misheard me and thought I wanted some crazy American people meal that was Spare rib (WITH bones), and pork fried rice. Of course, pressed on time, when I saw what she thought I ordered, I dismissed it and went home to chow down immediately. Well, it was a mistake to eat in a hurry, especially when it’s something that could potentially be as hard as bone. As I bitched about how nasty the meal was, I accidentally bit down incorrectly and broke the elastic on the mesial side of #21 broke! The metal was just hanging out loosely. Not cool. Well, the very next day, I went in to see Bancha after my failure of Pathology exam, and he fixed it by twisting a metal wire tight around the elastic and held the metal band in place again.

Things were back to happiness again, and earlier tonight, as I was eating REAL Moo Goo Gai Pan from next door, my own special ground beef + soy sauce mix + yellow daikon radish… I heard a a disturbing noise and the sensation that I have accomplished MIP. I knew something broke, and a quick look revealed the bracket on #20 simply came off of the enamel. Ahh, I will need to talk to Bancha again tomorrow… and this time, it’s might not be a simple fix of twist a wire on. He at the very least, going to have to acid etch, and glue a new one on.

Ah, what pain. Adjustment is less than a week from now, I am already looking forward to the week of pain following. At least my buccal mucosas aren’t getting weed whacked open constantly and needing wax up daily.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Orthodontic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.