Time sure flies when you’re having fun. It flies when you’re slowly being tortured with a mouth full of assorted metal and elastic as well. It’s been a year since the braces were put on, which is pretty unbelievable in the scheme of things. There is a part of me that barely remembers what it was like to not have them, to not have my mouth irritated or have to pop off to the bathroom to pry bits of my meal out of my brackets on a routine basis. However, the change they’ve made in that year is also pretty astounding. My overbite is nearly gone, the number of headaches I get has been cut down dramatically, and my smile, once crooked and something I hated, is nearly straight and gleaming. I still dislike it, though; odd that.

The pain, however, is far from over. To celebrate my one year in braces my orthodontist sent me home with a mouth full of new experiences. On my bottom arch I got my finishing wire, which sounds exciting except it just means it’s the last wire I’ll get, but that it’ll still be on for a while. I also got about 5 vastly irritating metal lig ties and yet another power chain, um yay? On the top arch it was just another wire, and the news that while I’m making lots of progress it’ll probably still be a few more wires until we even start talking finishing wires.

The biggest change, though, are the elastics. If you’ve never experienced elastics they’re these teeny tiny rubber bands that also do a reasonable imitation of torture devices. With my lingual braces on the top and ceramic on the bottom arrangement the bands run from the inside to the outside, which is even more complex than it sounds, but I’m getting the hang of it. You essentially have to blindly get the band to hook onto just the right tooth in the back and then stretch it until you can get it to snap onto the hook for the corresponding tooth in the front. And those stay on 24/7, they can be taken off to eat, though my ortho was sure to stress that not everyone feels the need to do so.

The way they stretch from behind the teeth on the top to the front on the bottom do an amazing facsimile of a dull knife slowly trying to slice into my tongue and lower lip. Oh and that’s not even touching on the jaw and tooth pain that has led to some, admittedly amazing, changes to my bite already. I actually have a bite, I didn’t last week. It is pretty amazing, and quite possibly worth the discomfort.

With lingual braces I was told that if the discomfort is too much for the tongue they can bond teeny clear little buttons to the front of your teeth for the elastics. We’ll see if that’s necessary. If they keep up the way they’re going I’m going to end up with a divided tongue, and while I think body art is cool that is never something that has appealed.

Wow am I lax. Good intentions leading to a blase attitude, truly. It’s probably because for a while there my braces were just pieces of metal attached to my teeth. Nothing was happening, nothing worth writing about. My orthodontist says that’s common, you get dramatic changes at first and then things slow and are more subtle. So if that happens to you, don’t sweat it.

Does it stay that way forever? Well obviously I’m only 9 months into this journey so I couldn’t answer the forever question, but it doesn’t even stay that way for long. I finally got a bracket on that one last tooth and then came the placid period. Then…enter the power chains. They’re like your normal ligs, but on 1 attached chain spanning multiple teeth and they put extra pressure on those teeth so your orthodontist can manipulate the teeth the way they want.

During the adjustment before last I received two of the things on my top arch. Changes were dramatic and nearly overnight. 1 remaining crooked tooth rotated and straightened within days. The pain…well lots of change brings lots of pain. It’s a good diet tool! Cleaning? That’s where things get interesting. I’ve always describing flossing with lingual braces as trying to sew in a straight line with your eyes closed and having power chains makes it more like trying to sew through numerous layers of fabric and needing to find just the right hole–all with your eyes closed. It’s a challenge. I’ve jabbed my gums with more floss and interproximital brushes in the last 7 weeks than I ever want to think about.

During my last adjustment they switched things up a bit, just 1 powerchain on the top and 2 on the bottom. You can’t even see the ones on the bottom, the clear chain is quite clear; I had to do some poking about to even figure out where they were. I’ll have to see how well it holds up to staining though!

It’s been less than 24 hours and my one last stubborn tooth on the top is almost fully rotated and on the bottom a gap between two teeth is nearly closed. They really do produce changes fast, but with the pain to accompany them. If your ortho says they’re putting on powerchains, I highly recommend taking some IBU right away and just keeping it up for a couple days. These suckers hurt more than when I initially got my braces on.

6 weeks until my next adjustment, I can’t wait now. The words “finishing wire” were uttered. It doesn’t mean I’m done ( I guess I could be in that wire for a good long time), it just means the 18 to 24 month sentence treatment period I was given might actually fall towards the lower end rather then going over. And here I was cautioning myself to expect a long term, not a short one!

It’s now day 5 of anywhere between 540 and 730 days in braces, a tiny step along the path of a pretty epic journey. Most of the people I’ve spoken to, though, say that these are the hardest days. These are the days most fraught with discomfort, paranoia (“was that wax coming off or a bracket? aaahhhh“) and just general thoughts of “why the heck am I doing this?!” I hope so. I hope it all gets better from here on in.

I have learned a few things along the way, though, that I hope might be of some use to others thinking about making the same choices I did.

First, lingual braces are actually quite comfortable. Maybe it’s because I had a tongue piercing once upon a time and I already had to go through that whole learning to talk around an injured tongue and dealing with discomfort thing, but really, they aren’t so bad. My speech is most certainly affected, but I have no doubts that given time and practice I’ll get rid of my annoying lisp.

Second, ceramic braces are not comfortable. I’m already regretting cheaping out and getting the linguals only on the top. After all the horror stories of discomfort and speech issues I decided that more standard braces on the bottom made sense. No one is going to see them anyway so why spend more for the fancy gold ones. The ceramic ones are more comfortable than the regular metal ones (my back molars have regular metal), but they’re still extremely discomforting. I feel as though my lip has had an altercation with a weed whacker.

Third, the area where the ceramics really shine is in hygiene. If you think flossing is bad normally, try doing it with threader floss while trying to open your mouth wide and look in the mirror so you can see what you’re doing. At least with the ceramics there are no jaw contortions needed, linguals, not so much. For that reason alone the extreme discomfort of the ceramics is worth it.

Fourth, wax is my friend in terms of comfort, but oh the hours I’ve already spent putting it on, taking it off, putting it on, taking it off, so on and so forth. Wax on, wax off, I feel like I’m in a classically campy 80s movie, just without the martial arts skills.

Fifth, when they say “You’ll start to see movement soon.” they really do mean soon. I thought with 6 weeks to go before my first adjustment, soon meant 2-3 weeks, not 36 hours. Feeling as your front two teeth begin to slowly move out of alignment is freaky. It’s like living in one of my worst nightmares. I’m sure it’ll only get worse from here on in, though. To anyone just getting started, just be prepared, soon comes sooner than you think!

Sixth, you can eat an astounding number of foods without chewing.

That’s it for now. I have every intention of posting pictures at some point, if only because some people (such as my little brother) are demanding them. I’m planning on posting updates at least every few weeks or once every adjustment, if only to chronicle things for my own memories, I might move them to a separate section of the site though. I know when I was doing my regular obsessive over-researching while making the decision about what types of braces to get, I enjoyed reading people’s experiences. So maybe someone out there will glean useful some information from mine.

[note, this was originally published at BoredNow.org]