Tuesday 23 September 2014

Day 3: The Return of the Wisdom Tooth, Potato & Gravy and the Broken Bracket

Day 3... is that all? Feels more like Day 18,374.

No, it doesn't really, I'm just being grumpy. I'm actually in a butt-load of pain and this surprises me: aching teeth and jaw, ripped and blistered lips and the inside of my mouth is shredded and just will not stop bleeding. I know that it will all be worth it, but right now it is so very torturous.
So, back to my orthodontist tomorrow - they're not open today so I couldn't make an appointment, I'm just going to have to rock up there in the morning. I'm going to:

a) ask him if he can trim some of the metal/wire from the bracket on my bottom-left molar if possible,
b) find out roughly how long it will be until my bite shifts to a position that allow my teeth to touch so I can eat/chew solid food again (as this is officially Day 10 [including the week of spacers] that I have been on a liquid diet and my carnivorous self is yearning for meat - and it is also making me a bit sick),
c) direct his focus to the mother-flipping wisdom tooth that is indeed impacted and pushing through, giving me a very attractive, pea-sized, white-tinged abscess in the far bottom-left corner of my mouth (no photo of this one, guys - to paint a picture for you, you can see the liquid and pus swirling around in it... satisfied?),
d) get his permission (do I need it?) to go to the dentist and get him to remove said impacted and likely infected wisdom tooth ASAP, and
e) have him check out and hopefully fix the little piece of wire that has come loose from my bracket on the tooth that is next to (well, in my case, mostly behind... but should be next to) my top-right front tooth (I have no idea what the actual names for teeth are, but you get the gist). 

I don't even know if the wire on the bracket is broken, it's a funny sort of a tooth so maybe it's only supposed to be held on with one wire, who knows. But I'll get him to suss it out regardless.

Okay, so I know all you really want is a photo. This was taken last night (Day 2):


And that little tooth I was just talking about with the broken piece of wire, it's the one on the left side of my slightly crooked front tooth (the right side in this photo). See how it is very far behind my front tooth? So I don't know if it supposed to be like that or not, but anyway, I'll get it checked.
Also note my very puffy lips - ouch.

Right, the potato & gravy thing... I think I've mentioned like 200 times now about my underbite, and how braces completely disallow any of my top row of teeth to tough the bottoms, meaning I cannot chew full stop. So I started brainstorming a whole range of foods that I could eat. I have a reliable smoothie maker, so that's good (I even have to blend soup to pure liquid, to give you an idea). I have icy poles and frozen yogurt and normal yoghurt and then I went and made my own frozen yoghurt, which was inherently messy... and then I had an epiphany. KFC. Potato & gravy.

I know, I know. Saaaa healthy! And I also know that I could make my own potato and gravy and it may even be tastier as well as healthier. But when you are as hungry as I constantly am on this never-ending liquid diet (and the need to chew is a huge part of that), KFC potato & gravy is a wondrous option. So I went to KFC and I asked for 3 large tubs of the stuff, and it was one of those moments where everything sort of goes quiet before you speak, and because the background noise was loud before I was still in loud-speaking mode, so EVERYONE, staff and customer, stared at me like I'd gone crazy. The kid who served me decided on the spot that I was crazy and I very much enjoyed a diet of potato & gravy for the entirety of yesterday (and I have another tub left in the fridge for today... don't judge me).

Okay, a little note, if anybody reading this is going through any of what I am going through, keeping busy really helps with the pain or the uncomfortableness. It's hard to not focus on any pain with your teeth because it is so sickening and the dull ache it causes makes concentrating on any other task close to impossible, but if you can find an activity to do that preferably does not involve talking (unless, you know, you enjoy ripping the insides of your mouth to oblivion), you should do it.

And another little note on orthodontic wax: I am completely useless at putting this stuff on my brackets. The most important thing is to DRY the brackets before you put it on. Am I, like, a serial human salivator? Or is it because the bracket that needs the wax is at the back of my mouth, on my molar? Anyway, if you're going to try to dry your bracket, DO NOT use tissues or cotton buds (they get caught super easily on it). Paper towel might work, also a cloth of some sort.

All right, sorry for the extremely long post, I think I'm just trying to put off uni work.

<3

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