Braces and Blood Clots

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.

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