Pam Reviews It All

The Horror Show in My Mouth

Warning: This post is not for the faint-of-heart or the squeamish. Reading beyond this point is done at your own risk.

Like this, minus the corsage.

The "minor" blood clotting I was experiencing last night turned into a full blown horror movie last night when I woke up at 2 a.m. chewing on a huge slug-like blob that had formed on the side of my mouth. I woke up literally chewing on something. I lumbered out of bed and into the bathroom. I turned on the light, opened my mouth, and looked in the mirror.

"OH HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYLLLL NO!" I screamed, startling Aron out of his slumber.

My mouth was a bloody mess. This was just... BEYOND.

Beyond normal.
Beyond Twilight.
Beyond Walking Dead.
Beyond Stigmata.
Beyond anything anyone should ever have to deal with just to get straight teeth.

The blob I had been chewing on was actually a gigantic blood clot, and it now covered all my lower left molars, both sides, and along the top. (I have a picture, but it's pretty gross, so I'm not going to post it. I can text it to you if you want to see it, though.) All my teeth, including my newly installed braces was coated in dark, red blood.

I was pretty sure a warm salt water rinse wasn't going to fix this.

Trying not to panic, I dug the humongous clots out of my mouth and rinsed until the sink was stained pink. I managed to clear out the clots, but I was still bleeding from one spot where one particular spacer was irritating my gums. Since I had dislodged the clots, I'd probably started the whole process all over again. I was certain that if I went back to sleep like this I'd only wake up to another giant blood blob.

At this point, I wasn't even sure if taking out the offending spacer would stop the bleeding, but it was really the only thing I could think to do. It took some doing, but a few good tugs with a pair of tweezers and the damn thing was out.

Thankfully, the bleeding stopped almost instantly.

I awoke the next day with no clots. Looking inside my mouth, there was no sign of the carnage of the night before. It was like nothing ever happened.

Looking at the bathroom, however, you would have thought I had slaughtered someone in the middle of the night. I was dealing with a serious "splatter" situation. There was blood splatter everywhere-- the mirrors, the counter, even on my cute little flowered pajamas.

I called the ortho the next day, but since it was a Saturday my doctor wasn't in. There was a technician there who answered and when I described what had happened, all she said was, "Okay, well, just come back in around the 6th and we'll put the spacer back in."

Really?

I am compelled to say that my experience with the clotting is NOT NORMAL and that if you are going to get braces and need spacers in, you will likely NOT have this experience. I don't want to scare anyone from getting their teeth fixed. But this is what really happened to me, so there it is.

Braces and Blood Clots

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Cheesin' hard!

Barely noticeable, right?

So these are them. I got them on this morning. Clear on the top, regular metal on the bottom.

The Installation

So getting the full set took a little less than the playing time of the movie "Marley and Me" which was playing on the big screen to distract patients and (technicians) while our teeth were getting worked on. [MOVIE SPOILER ALERT]: The movie had just started when I sat in the chair, and Jennifer Anniston and Owen Wilson were saying their tearful goodbyes to Marley as I was leaving.

The most uncomfortable part of the whole process was the crazy mouth stretching device they put around my lips to keep my mouth open. My tip to people before they go in for braces is to start moisturizing your lips and the area around the mouth for about a week before. The last thing you want is dry, chapped lips when they put that device on. Your lips will bleed and split, and you don't want another, unnecessary pain in your face.

Other than that, it's all relatively painless. The adhesive they use to cement the brackets and bands to the teeth is sour. I remember that from when I was a kid.

It's a really weird sensation when they first release your mouth from the stretchy device thing and you feel the brackets against the inside of your lips for the first time. It's pricklier than I remember, even though I've had braces before. I'm pretty sure the mouth gets used to the feeling after a while and it will feel normal.

I love how you can barely see the clear brackets on the top in the picture. That's progress. But I tell you, you sure as hell can feel them! I measured, and they sit 1/8 of an inch off your teeth. I'm not sure how much of an improvement that is over when I had them the first time around. Really, you'd think they'd have streamlined them a tad more than that over 24 years of technological improvements.

There Will Be Blood Clots

Of course, my weird mouth is experiencing complications.

Unfortunately, they put those pinche spacers back in. They put them back in the old spots, plus a couple new ones. I'm getting an appliance for the upper arch so they want to make sure the gap doesn't close up before it's ready. They promised me they wouldn't hurt as much the last 2 weeks, but I'm skeptical.

But besides that, one of the new spacers they put in is really irritating the gums so much that it's causing, like, a LOT of bleeding. So much that my clear braces are now pink with my own blood. And the gums are attempting to clot, but since there's something in the way of the actual open wound, it's just kind of clotting around the spacer and over the whole tooth. So now one of my molars is encased in this slimy dark blood clot.

Sorry to gross you all out. Poor Rugby is all skeeved out. Even I'm skeeved out. The inside of my mouth looks like a fricking crime scene. I tried to explain this to the ortho over the phone, but they just seemed to think this was normal bleeding. They told me to rinse with a warm salt water and that it should stop by tomorrow.

If I'm still bleeding tomorrow I'm pulling out the offending spacer myself. I can't go around all weekend looking like I've just feasted on the raw flesh of a human.

I'm pretty sure this is not normal.

Said the girl who grew a tooth from the roof of her mouth.

The Generational Thigh Gap

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So I was driving in my car one day with the local Top 40 radio station on, bopping around to some of today's pop hits. (I'm not a music snob, and I think there's a reason popular music is popular: It's catchy and easy to dance to!)

And then that one Icona Pop song came on the radio-- you know, the one where the girls sing about throwing someone's shit down the stairs and driving a car into a bridge to watch it burn.

"I don't care! I love it! I don't care!"

Good stuff to jump around to at home when you're by yourself and you don't have to own up to anybody else that you secretly like this stuff. At least I thought it was good stuff, until I heard the bridge:

The foreign girls sing:

You're on a different road, I'm in the milky way

You want me down on earth, but I am up in space

You're so damn hard to please, we gotta kill this switch

You're from the '70s, but I'm a '90s b*tch

SAY WHAT?! I remember the first time I made out the actual words... I felt slighted, called out, OLD. I started doing the math in my head. "So if someone was born, say in 1990, they'd be 23 now... HOLY CRAP. I graduated in 1993, so someone born in 1993 would be 20...."

Son of a B, I am old!

I think the lyrics are about an older jerk boyfriend but still. As a person born in the '70s, and in deep denial of my aging, I was deeply offended.

Scandalized, I played this song to my girlfriends who were also born in the '70s. They were all innocently bouncing around to the infectious beat, until the line, "You're from the '70s, but I'm a '90s bitch."

Then there was this collective gasp and everyone stopped dancing. Hahaha! ("Oh no, she di-int!) I'll never forget it.

Talk about sobering. Still, in a lot of ways I'm glad that I was born in the '70s, and am NOT a '90s bitch. For one thing, we never had to think about the Thigh Gap growing up.

The Generational (Thigh) Gap

Have you heard about the this Thigh Gap business? It's an actual thing that young women are striving for. It's not about the 6-pack, or the big boobs, or the toned arms anymore for some young girls.

For those that don't know, the Thigh Gap is when you put your feet together and your upper thighs don't touch. It's something that's largely genetic and determined by your bone structure. And yet girls are resorting to extreme diet and exercise, and even plastic surgery to try to achieve this.

The Thigh Gap thing is such a big trend right now, it's even spawned an Anti-Thigh-Gap Movement on the internet! It's been all over the news lately too. Google it-- you'd be surprised how much attention it's been getting.

So if you have a thigh gap, cool. If you don't have a thigh gap, cool.

I'm just glad that I never had to consider the thigh gap when I was a teen or in my early 20s. I may or may not have had one back in my younger days, but I don't remember because I never thought about it. I had enough angst to deal without beating myself up over something weird like that.

Anyway, here's Icona Pop with I Love It, just for funsies. This song makes me feel young and ancient at the same time.

Product Review: Handy Caddy, Sliding Kitchen Appliance Caddy

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Rugby and I need our Go-Go Juice in the mornings. Without coffee, I only work at 60%, and Rugby is 100% intolerable. (It's okay-- he knows it and I'm used to it.) We switched over to a Keurig machine after our traditional coffee-maker crapped out on us, and it has been a life-changer in terms of how fast we can get the stuff down our throats.

In fact, it's so easy, some mornings Squirt makes us coffee and brings it to us in bed. But everyone knows how great the Keurig is by now. So I'm not posting about that.

Today, Pam Reviews Handy Caddy!

It's the item I didn't know I'd always looked for, but could never find!

The Most Boring Thing to Ever Change My Life

As if getting my coffee fix in the morning hadn't already been simplified enough, this incredibly simple sliding tray has smoothed out the only other kink in my morning routine.

On the box it reads:

"Tired of rearranging your counter to access your coffeemaker, blender or other appliances? Start your day on a roll with the Handy Caddy sliding tray."

Because all my counters also have cabinets over head, I could not open the Keurig's pod dispenser hatch wide enough to drop in/take out the coffee pods. See?

My life is so hard.

I'd have to pick up the machine and move it forward, and when the water reservoir is full, it's not exactly light. 9 times out of 10 it would sit there in the middle of the counter until I needed the space again for cooking or whatever. It seems like a tiny inconvenience, but when you're already dealing with a tight kitchen, stuff like this works your nerves.

Then I saw the Handy Caddy at Ross one day for $3.99. I was worried that our Keurig would be too large for it, but it fits on top perfectly. (We have the Keurig B40 Elite Brewing System.)

Now it's never a fight to move the Keurig. I just slide the tray forward, and the whole machine comes along with it. The thing rolls smoothly and feels pretty stable.

My life got so much easier!

Amazing! When I'm done, the whole thing rolls neatly back under the cabinet!

Now it's time to answer....

Pam's Product Review Questions

Does the product do what it says it will? Yes, it slides appliances back and forth on the counter top with ease.
Is the product worth the money you paid? I paid a whopping $4, plus tax, so YES! I've seen the Handy Caddy and similar products priced on Amazon between $7 and $20.
How would you improve the product? It might be nice to see in other colors to coordinate with different decor.
Would you repurchase/recommend to others? Yes. I see the Handy Caddy working well with traditional coffee makers and other appliances as well.
Caveats: A. Make sure your appliance fits. (Here are the caddy measurements: 12 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches.) B. Try to find it for as cheap as I did, if you can.

Handy Caddy: Where to Find It

Amazon
Bed Bath and Beyond
I found mine at Ross!

Adult Braces: Spacers Make Me Want to Punch People

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What Are Spacers?

So like I said in my previous braces post, I'm going in for full "installation" on Friday. The brackets are the little square guys they put on each individual tooth and through which the "arch wire" is threaded across the teeth. In my case, they are putting metal bands around four molars, one on each side of both the top and bottom teeth. The bands are there to anchor the wire.

To make it easier for them to slide the bands around the molars they placed "spacers" on either side of each molar. These spacers are pretty much tiny, but thick rubber bands that they force between the teeth to create more space in between.

This picture was swiped off the innernetz. It's not me, but pretty much what I've got going on.

Spacers Suck.

The gals at the ortho's office told me that the two weeks I have the spacers in will be the worst two weeks of my whole treatment.

P'shaw, said I. I had braces twice already. I don't remember spacers being bad.

Spacers are bad. Let me try to describe it for you:

Imagine chewing on a big, dry piece of steak. And imagine that huge strings of meat got stuck in 8 separate places in your teeth, and that everytime you chewed on something else, those pieces of meat get lodged further and further between your teeth, cutting into your gums. Now imagine THAT YOU HAD TO KEEP THAT CRAP IN YOUR TEETH FOR 14 DAYS STRAIGHT.

(Side note: There's a Filipino word for stuff that gets stuck in your teeth, "tinga" pronounced tee-NGAH. There's no word for that in English.)

And it hurts like a mother, y'all... It's wierd. These spacers make my teeth and head hurt. And I swear, my inner ears are burning. The pain doesn't eventually subside, like the pressure of braces does. It just pretty much hangs around all day.

Obviously, this is just my experience, so I can't say that spacers will make you want to punch folks in the face. But me, I'm ready to sock someone. If only someone would let me. So far, no takers.

These little bitches come out on Friday!!! And then the real fun begins! I'm excited to get this party started.

Brace Yourself!

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ALEX TREBEC

The answer is... "So you didn't wear your retainer..."

PAM

What is "The thing you don't say to a 38-year-old woman upon her walking into an orthodontist office to be fitted with braces for the the third time in her life"?

ALEX TREBEC

Correct! I would have also taken, "What is totally obvious?"

PAM

Super! Next, I'll take "Things You Learn the Hard, Expensive Way for $5000", Alex.

**Retain This, B*tches.**

I'm getting braces. Again (again). At 38 years old. Yes, I'm about to be THAT lady. And every time I explain to anyone that I'd already had braces as a child, I always get slapped in the face with some variation of, "Tsk tsk, you didn't wear your retainer, did you?"

You mean the retainer that I was given when I was 15? Ummm, no, dudes.

And seriously, I know tons of people my age who had braces and stopped wearing their retainers. And their teeth still look great.

Life just ain't fair.

Brief History of Pam's Mouth Hole

At 9 years old, my two front permanent teeth grew in janky, like a V pointing inward. Then my right canine started growing in all high on the gums. At 12 years old, x-rays confirmed that a mutant canine was also growing through the middle of my pallette.

?

Take a minute to process that. A tooth was growing through the roof of my mouth. The dentist joked that I was part shark.

Several gum-gouging oral surgeries, headgears, and torture devices later, I was finally only just ready for braces. Over the next two years, they managed to slowly and painfully drag the mutant canine from the roof of my mouth to the spot it was supposed to live.

Success! They took the braces off.

3 months later they said, "Just kidding!" and put the braces back on. 1 year after that, they took them off again. I was 15.

23 years after all that mess, I'm going in again for Round 3 of braces. There's been a lot of shifting. It seems that my mutant canine is migrating upstream to its home in the middle of my pallette. Possibly to spawn, like a salmon.

Why Now?

I'm more a summer chicken than a spring one. And I mean, my teeth can look straight in pictures if I work my angles and/or make sure my mouth is slightly open so you don't see the crazy crossbite. Plus, I already gotz a man, so why spare the discomfort and the considerable expense?

It bothers me when I see a bad picture (which is often-- thanks, FB)
Whenever I bite into an apple I see the teethmarks of the chupacabra (who also needs braces)
My mother points it out to me every other time she sees me.
My jaw has shifted to the right, so I don't have just crooked teeth. I also have a crooked face.
It's getting worse with each passing year.

That's why.

And if you're wondering why I just don't do Invisalign: My mutant canine is kind of a dick with its own agenda. Invisalign won't do shit for the mutiny happening in my gums.

I am, however, doing clear brackets up top, which is a nice improvement from the days of the full metal teeth jackets.

Braces: Reviewing the Process

So, I'm going to document this whole process from beginning to end to help any of you older, dentally challenged peeps out there who are going through the same thing or are considering doing this.

Here is a "before" picture of my teef, taken May 2013.

PAM'S TEEF.

I'm scheduled to get the brackets and wiring in on Friday. It's gonna be like 1987 all over again.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and you better believe I'm going to wear my retainer till the end. I've already told Rugby and Squirt that I wish to be buried with the retainer in my mouth so that mutant canine will know its place forever.

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