Somebody pinch me!

No surgery?! Huh? ...Well maybe.

Yesterday was adjustment number 8. The first order of business, as planned last time, was to re-bond my lower 5-5 brackets. Jasmine detached the brackets and then removed the wire while they were still seated around the wire. That was a neat way of doing it; and she later used the wire as reference for putting the new brackets on. I then had to endure the burr tool again, but I must say that she did a great job and I felt pretty relaxed. I think I counted only two or three sensitive spots that made me jump. Then once my teeth were all polished and naked of any hardware she let me look in the mirror. It's amazing how much better they look without brackets, and I'm very happy with how straight they have become. Now that the brackets are back on and and repositioned she said things will begin to level out. I've been waiting for that! I think level teeth are a sign of being close to done with braces, perhaps not for me, but it's something I've noticed in others.

Dr W was busy with another patient so I sat in the waiting room while listening to annoying children's programs on the tv. Thankfully the kids in the room finally left so I turned the volume down.

Dr W called me in and it was time for him to work his magic. He put a new wire on the bottom, a wire with some special thermal properties that he wanted to use me as a guinea pig for. My impression was that it worked very well. On top he put two bends in the wire to "intrude" my central incisors since they are a bit long. He said this will be important cosmetically.

Then came a surprise...

"Graham, have I redone your records yet?"

"Nope, but you mentioned doing that last time."

"Ok, let's make an appointment to do that. We'll do a new PAN, CEPH and photos. Your teeth are touching right on edge so I want to see if we should correct it surgically or whether we should do it dentally with class III elastics. It is possible to procline your upper teeth some more."

Huh?! You mean I might not need surgery? I really have mixed emotions about this and I'm still quite upset about it today. On one side I know that surgery has risks and that avoiding it can sometimes be ideal. It also means I'll save some cash and not have to go through months and months of extended recovery. But on the other hand I don't want to cut any corners. I don't want to extend my treatment by going off on a tangent with elastics only to find that they didn't work well enough or that I later relapse. And I don't want anything less than an ideal solution both functionally and cosmetically.

It turned out that they had some time to take new x-rays and photos as soon as Dr W was finished with me. Good. Less waiting. I go back on August 25th to get the verdict.

So what are class III elastics and how do they work? I found this link (PDF format) last night which does a reasonable job of explaining it (Figure 8.7 on page 223 seems to be the state I'm in). It appears that elastics can correct an under bite within a certain threshold. I assume measurements can be taken from the x-rays. I'm right on the borderline, hence my anxiety.

So here I wait. Agonize. Anticipate.



Lower incisors are finally pretty much straight.



Bends to intrude the central incisors.