where's the popcorn?!? (6 weeks into braces, yes weeks already!)

i had been having issues with the headgear tube again after my last adjustment. instead of hitting (and wrecking) my crown when i was grinding at night, it was hitting the tooth behind my crown. a REAL tooth! gah! so, i called into the ortho office and we made an 'emergency' appointment for me to come in that friday after my retie.

the assistant checked it out, saw what i was talking about, thought for a second and said, hmm... so it's happening because of your crossbite, which will be fixed when you have surgery, but that's not going to be for quite a while so yeah, we've got to do something about that. (little voice in cori's head, surgery isn't for a LONG time??? i'm not going past 18 months in braces with no surgery!).

dr. hobday finally came over, checked it out, saw the marks on my teeth (the assistant had marked me up with some biting paper stuff). said, 'well, unfortunately we can't grind that tube off, you'll need it for when you get your headgear.' HA HA HA! dr. hobday you are too funny. i don't think so.

he ground down the tube again, seemed to be better but he said that if we needed to, we could take that band off and grind the headgear tube totally off and then put the band back on.

luckily it's been a week and a half and it seems that it worked! yea! while there are mornings that i can tell that was grinding the night before, those teeth (the one with the headgear tube and the two under it on the bottom) are not aching the way they were before and i haven't hit the headgear tube in my day to day life (also was an issue). so yea, one problem down. 4000 more to go?

one thing that was a tease was going in after 3 1/2 weeks and having my bands changed. now i have to live with this color for twice as long and it definitely seems like it's taking forever! i wanted a light/lime green, a happy springy color. but the green at my ortho was more like, fluorescent burn your eyes out green. ick. so i saw these, they looked pretty, metallic bluish with a hint of purple. so we did them. she threw them on quick (i can't believe how fast they do that!) and while waiting for dr. hobday i took a peek. oh... well... that is darker than i though it would be. oh well, i'm just having fun with this, you can't seriously make braces look good so why not have fun. i want to lighten it up next time though. i'm still wanting the perfect green but... let's see, next adjustment is july 20th (next appt is july 13th, MORE SPACERS!). but if i have them on for 6 weeks that takes me to... end of august/beginning of sept. so what do i have planned for end of july and all of august. we have a wedding we are going to in mid-august so that's something to consider... don't know what i'm wearing yet though, so i don't know what color to even think about yet...

i met with a buyer at work today though, she just had upper surgery done a month ago! she looks great! well, still slightly swollen of course but not bad overall at all! it's nice to find and talk to a real person who has had this done. while i love the yahoo groups i have found and they are VERY helpful, it's nice to look at someone face to face and chat in real life.