Brace Yourself

This is the new guaranteed plan for those who wish to lose weight: Braces.

Braces on teeth I mean.

On my first visit to the orthodontist last month, I met a doctor many would wish to emulate. Dr Shafeeq is extremely nice. He's engaging and has a very warm smile. He's the type of doctor you would want to keep going to because he explains everything like what we always learn in Clinical Skills Training on how to deal with patients. On my first visit to him last month, the conversation went something like this:

Dr : Assalamualaikum. How are you? *smile smile*

Me: Waalaikumsalam.

Dr : So what brings you here?

Me: My teeth... My mom brought me here.

Dr : Ok, so may I know why now? Why not last year or any other time?

Me: My mom have asked long ago for me to see an orthodontist. I'm on holiday now.

Dr : Alright then, I can see from here that your teeth are a little misaligned. Or maybe that's because that's my job haha. May I know how you feel about your teeth?

Me: Yeah. Umm I have no problem at all. I mean, I don't feel any less confident or anything. In fact, I love smiling a lot:)

Dr : Uhuh and what does your friends say?

Me: My friends don't say anything about them. I'm really okay with them (teeth I mean)

Dr : I'm going to have a look at your teeth now:)

He took pictures, a model sample and I had to take two x-rays of my jaw. That was for the first visit. When I came again for the second visit, he gave me a two-page written report (complete with my teeth conditions, treatment plans and alternative, cost etc). He patiently explained to me each part, highlighting the problems and outlining treatment plans. I summarize his verbal report as such:

Dr : Well, first of all from the x-ray, we have no problem with your jaw. But it seems we have quite a complicated case here. You see, your lower teeth have all moved to the right and your upper teeth have moved to the left. I'm not so sure why that is, but it's happened. So your centre line is not aligned with your face. Plus you can see here (he showed me my model teeth), that the lower and upper teeth are not aligned correctly.

Also, there is a crowding in your lower teeth. So, it's like there's a lot of furniture in the house. It's either we have to remove furniture or make the house bigger. When there is a lot of furniture, it's more difficult to clean the house right? So there's some inflammation here which would cause your gums to bleed.

As you can see, there is an overbite here (lower teeth infront of the upper teeth); normally the upper teeth would be infront of your lower teeth.

So I would conclude that you have quite a serious case. If following a standard in UK, your case would be a 4/5. So do you think you would want to put on the braces?

In the end, we concluded that we would follow the orthodontist's expertise. Which was the reason we came to him in the first place. I had to make a visit to the dentist and after that back to Dr Shafeeq. This time around, it was braces time.

During the most recent visit where the braces were put on, he explained to me the procedure in detail (This'll be quite boring for you, he said). Apparently I was quite shocked to find out that they GLUED the brackets onto the teeth! And then the archwire would be snapped into place.

After that, Dr Shafeeq said: This is the only practice where the patient will feel pain AFTER they go home haha. This is going to be the start of your long affair with braces:)

I didn't really understand what he meant with pain being felt after I went home. When I came home and had something to eat, it was of course quite awkward because it's like you have something in your mouth. I couldn't differentiate which was food and which was braces.

On the second day when I woke up, when I moved my mouth, I was kinda freaking out until I came to the realization that: Oh yeah, I'm wearing braces. Each root of the tooth was throbbing like I was having a toothache at all my upper teeth. I couldn't bite anything- not even rice. And this is how this dieting technique works:

1. Since it would really hurt when you bite, all you can resort to is soft food diet like porridge or mashed bananas.
2. Since it really hurts to eat, you would tend to eat much much much slower. What usually takes me 5 minutes took me triple the time. It's good for digestion (but not good if all you can do is swallow).
3. Since its such a pain anyway to be eating, you get tired of it quickly and end up not eating much. (So you can't overeat)

It went on for a week until now. Whenever my lower teeth would accidentally make contact with the upper teeth, it would throb like crazy. But Alhamdulillah, the pain wasn't so bad to the extent that I had to take painkillers. I could sleep:) I just had the letter 's' turn into 'th' sometimes. Haha.

Well, the reason I didn't want to blog about this earlier is because I would want people to find out for themselves. Also if I did blog, it would be a long list of horrific stories and scare those who ARE going to wear braces! (haha nah, this is just preparations). But SOMEONE had already realized I wore braces haha. So it didn't matter anyway.

1.5 years til the outcome. Aki says it doesn't matter because "You look pretty in anything." :) I'm not soo bothered by how I look. I would not stop smiling widely. It's just a pain for when I want to eat and talk. But my eldest brother said: Hah, you won't even feel it by next month.

Until of course, when Dr Shafeeq fixes on the braces for the lower teeth.

Alia, brace yourself for it.