I have a spring in my mouth!

Days since I got my braces put in: 79 days
Next ortho visit: 5 April 2013

Can you see the coily spring?! :D
I don't know why my teeth look
disgustingly yellow here, but I think
it was the lighting.

After weeks of lamenting and worrying about my poor rejected tooth, the ortho finally put in a spring (also called an orthodontic coil, I believe) in yesterday and I was ecstatic! How exciting! It feels like tangible progress! The spring is meant to create space for my little left-out canine in the back and I'm so excited for my teeth to move enough so we can put a little bracket on it and bring it out where it belongs!

I was so thankful to my ortho I could have hugged him! (Except that he seemed a bit moody that day, and I don't really know him that well, and I'm not a cute little five year old so it's a little social inappropriate for such outbursts of affectionate gratitude, so I refrained.)

I did ask the ortho as well about how much longer it looks like my teeth are going to take to be "surgery ready" and he said "one year". :((( It has been almost 3 months since I got my braces in and I was hoping for the whole process to take a year... and now it's been lengthened. Naughty teeth. I was pretty sad about it, so I told my dad and his reply was a typical dad-reply. "That's good, it means you have strong teeth and gums!" Haha. My dad somehow always finds a way to be optimistic and encouraging in pretty much any circumstance.

In case you're wondering, the orthoman (yes, I think it sounds nice to call him that henceforth) is Dr Wee who practises at Dr Cheng Orthodontic Clinic. I was referred to him by my jaw surgeon who told me "meet him and see there is (dental) chemistry" before I met him to get my braces done. Both of them are pretty young so I guess they probably studied or practiced together at some point. Interestingly, as with what most people in my tech-savvy generation would do, I googled the clinic and found that he managed a clinic blog and read some of the posts. The writing style reflected a pretty nice and witty personality...with some lame and kinda cheesy jokes at points, but I guess it helped at least to know that my dentist wasn't going to be some dreary jaded practitioner of sorts. (Side note: He doesn't seem as witty and spritely in real life, but hey, he's still somewhat friendly...and that's still better than the jaded dreary deadpan scary ones. *flashes of scary compulsory primary school dentist visits* *shiver*)

On other notes, taking pictures of my jaw nowadays is freaking me out a little bit. These pictures below was my iPhone's camera angle, but gosh do my teeth and jaw look really messed up! Look! (Note: the phone camera photos are on a horizontal flip so the "left-out tooth" is on the wrong side. :/)

My top and bottom teeth are suddenly so obviously misaligned.

From the top... my teeth have been pushed out so there's a hole now...
And my left-out tooth looks like the kind of teeth thatt a witch, or something, would have. :((

Okay, this one was taken straight-on with photobooth on my Mac so it should be more accurate.
But goodness! Jaw misalignment is pretty scary!

Nope, witch's tooth still there. :((

Note to self: No more photos from the iPhone which gives freaky weird angles. 

And only closed-mouth smiles from now.

I still remember my family had a photoshoot together a few years back, and as I tried to flash my happiest, most exciting smile (as I thought of many happy things...like having a photoshoot with my family) the photographer kept telling me not to smile too wide. It was a little disturbing and sad. But I guess that shall now all be fuel to why it is important to me to get this jaw surgery done (yes, other than the more important reasons about the risk of arthritis and stuff in my jaw in later life). I can't wait!