Pinup smile update: in which the orthodontist isn't pleased...

It's been a long time since I last wrote about my Invisalign. Actually, I wrote about getting my teeth out and the week before I got my braces and then promptly stopped talking. I'm annoyed at myself because before I signed up for orthodontics, I obsessively read blogs and got annoyed when they stopped sharing in the middle of the process.

The thing is, it became a part of my routine really quickly and I couldn't think of anything more boring to continually post about them. The two-weekly changes of little plastic, mouthguard-looking things; the occasional ulcers; getting used to having to put your fingers in your mouth; the extra shame getting lipstick on your teeth involved (it goes under the trays, which is not easy to subtly fix); and working out how to not have the basic need to eat make me ruin a $50 manicure (the trays, they are buggers to pull out and nails are required. And sacrificed).

I also was struggling with the fact that just three months after I made the commitment to go forward with two not-so-cheap years of orthodontics, I lost my job and started working part-time. It's fair to say, my disposable income would be a lot higher if these little plastic doo-dads didn't cost me so much, and I probably wouldn't have gone ahead had I had a crystal ball about the job situation. 

It was only a few months of wearing Invisalign before people started telling me they could see a difference. In the first weeks, I'd scrutinise the shape of the new trays, stare at my mouth in the mirror and make side-by-side collages of my current face with my pre-op face. I didn't see what people were talking about and decided they were just being nice (and lots of those comments came when I was whinging because it's gross taking your spit-covered retainers out before you eat at a restaurant).

This was the end of May 2015, three months in.
No big changes that I could see, but people had started commenting at this point. 

Last week I started on tray 23 of 32, so theoretically I have nine trays to go before the 'refinement' process starts, which is about 18 weeks.  Up until Christmas time, the process has been going smoothly. Generally, when I change my trays over, they're a bit tight for the first day and sore when I wake up on the second morning because they've had eight full hours in my mouth. The pain doesn't really last much longer than that. 

This was one of the first pictures where I could see some difference when people commented (July 2015).

I saw a massive change in about October, and realised that the front tooth that I had not-very-affectionately nicknamed Bucky, wasn't so bucky anymore. I started to feel pretty amazing about the process and not so resentful of the large chunk of my income it takes to pay for them every week. 

And then came my December orthodontist visit. He prodded around in my mouth for a long time and then I heard one of my most feared orthodontic-related words: 'wire' (you'll find out what the others are in a second). One tooth, one that's towards the back and pretty crooked, had decided not to comply with the trays and had started its own merry journey in a completely different direction. The only way to get this guy back into line is fairly aggressive wiring, so he wired three of the back teeth on the right hand side and I entered a world of pain I could never have imagined. 

The inside of my cheek was red-raw before I'd even made it home and less than an hour later it was a total mess. It was beyond the help of wax. And then the tooth pain was incredible too. I was reaching for the pain killers in a way I hadn't since my extraction surgeries. But then, just as quickly as it started, it settled down and I went about my life. It was a little more frustrating than usual because he'd also made some adjustments to my trays to fit the wire, and at singing lessons in particular, I discovered I could flick my top trays out at the most inopportune times. I also discovered I could click them, and clicking became a bit of a tick for me.

This week, I had another visit with my orthodontist. He tut-tutted his way through the appointment, rewired my three stubborn back teeth, told me I'd broken the wire pretty soon after my last appointment and therefore given myself another huge delay, and told me to spend a month and a bit on two trays instead of my usual fortnightly switches. He then uttered my other most-feared orthodontic phrase: 'enamel shaving.'

Side-by-side comparison: Left side is day of surgery, pre-extraction, right is from 1 February 2016.
Look at the difference in the bottom teeth!

A couple of weeks ago, I had my first photoshoot of the year and when the pictures came back, I really, really noticed my smile. It made me adjust my thinking about the major money sacrifice, and gave me a confidence boost.

The shoot was only a couple of days before my last orthodontist visit, so while I know I'm delayed a bit in terms of my finish date now, am dealing with bad pain from the aggressive rewiring, and having anxiety about my next appointment and the enamel shaving, I keep looking at this picture from that shoot day, and thinking about how good that smile is.

No one said this process was going to be easy, but boy, is it ever worthwhile.

Photo by Senergy Photography (shot at the Contact2016 shoot day Hotel Jen Brisbane)

My toothless week

By far the worst part of this process (so far — it's early days yet) were the days between surgery and starting my Invisalign — the days where I was toothless seemingly without reason. Recovery took a few days, and I needed one more day off work than what I'd planned, but once I started to feel better, the gaps where the four pre-molars once were started to gross me out.

It's like it's your tongue's job to explore any changes to your mouth. I get ulcers a lot, and my tongue is always prodding at them. With the gaps, this was worse. I'd feel something, freak out that I was about to eat one of my stitches, and immediately start gagging.

I also found it really hard to talk to people. Partly because of the pain, partly because I thought they would be looking at my new gaps and wondering why I was toothless. I met the incredible Tess Munster on Saturday, and I really hate my photos (which really contradicts the Eff Your Beauty Standards movement that we were celebrating that day) because I'm smiling so broadly, you can see one of the gaps. I was also in so much pain by the time I left (from smiling and talking, so I'd had fun getting to that point), that I was close to tears.

When I started back on solid food at the end of last week, it was hard work chewing in the front, trying to make sure everything got swallowed down and nothing got stuck in the gaps. The surgeon's instructions on making sure I didn't get an infection due to food left behind were really clear, and freaked me out and I became the most diligent salt-swisher and brusher I've ever been.

I think this served me well because I'm recovering really well. I've got a tiny bit of pain, and funnily enough, quite a bit of it is in the front of my mouth, in the crowded teeth on the top and bottom where my Invisalign will be doing the most work. I think having teeth out, as unpleasant as it actually was, was a good start to the process. I'm used to not snacking any more, I'm drinking twice the amount of water and I'm brushing and flossing three times a day.

My desk drawer at work now looks like this:

Toothpaste (cruelty free brand!), rinsing/soaking cup, 2 toothbrushes, hand sanitiser, panadols and several lip glosses

And I've started putting together toothbrush kits to take with me wherever I go, so I don't have any excuse not to brush, floss and rinse after meals.

There's no denying things are going to be tough, particularly in the first few weeks of treatment, but I keep reminding myself of how great my smile is going to be this time in 2017!

Perfect pinup smile

If you follow my Facebook, you may have seen a post I made recently about my smile. I smile a lot, I have a ridiculous sense of humour and laugh a lot. But I hate, hate, hate seeing photos of myself at certain angles, smiling at the camera. I always tried to avoid it, but since I've been standing in front of the camera a bit more in the last couple of years, I've pretty much stopped smiling on film full stop.

A rare, front-facing shot of me taken by Danielle Hamilton Photography | MUAH by the Lindy Charm School

We all have body hang ups. I’ve got a list of them, but the biggest one for as long as I can remember has been my teeth. I’d looked into fixing them and getting braces at various periods of my adult life, but every quote I got involved removing my remaining wisdom teeth (just two, on the bottom), plus four pre-molars — one from both top and bottom on either side of my mouth. This would have to be done in surgery, and the braces would have to go on about a week later. Left any longer, the teeth start to move and you have to go through all your set-up and quoting again. This always stopped me from going forward because of the cost of the surgery, plus the cost of the braces so quickly after, was impossible for me to manage every time I started to investigate.

Terrible photo, day of surgery, illustrating terrible teeth. Yes, this attractive creature is the same one in the bath above...

Late last year I decided that 2015 was the start of ‘operation smile’ and I once again went through all the initial appointments, found an orthodontist who worked for me (more on that in another post), met with a surgeon, booked surgery dates and well, here we are… with T -1 day until I start my Invisalign treatment.

I want to document my treatment because as an adult getting orthodontic work, there’s more to consider than just the cost — and that in itself is considerable — and it wasn’t something I could find a lot to read about when I was in research mode. It’s also something that’s obviously going to have an effect on being a pinup, particularly for photoshoots, and not something I’ve seen documented before.
So here’s the story about my surgery. I will back track in some upcoming posts, so I can talk a bit about choosing an orthodontist and my experience, which wasn’t at all pleasant, and also about making the decision to go forward with Invisalign over other treatment options.

As much as I wanted to avoid having teeth out, I’d known for a while that I wasn’t going to get my smile fixed without it happening. So when my new orthodontist told me to have the same four pre-molars and two wisdoms out, I asked to be referred to a surgeon.

I had an initial appointment with my surgeon just before Christmas, where he told me about what would happen at the surgery, explained the risks and booked in a date.

Fast-forward to just over a week ago, when I arrived at the hospital at around 11am, ready for lunch and a big sleep. There are lots of stages to having day surgery, and lots of waiting and being moved from area-to-area. By the time I got to the point where I was talking with a nurse, my blood pressure was really high. But then the excitement died down, I got into a hospital gown and robe and went to sit in a recliner for a couple of hours. When they finally came to get me, the jitters set in for real and so by the time I was put on the bed in theatre, I was shaking and cold and not really cool with what was about to happen.

It didn't help then that my wonky veins gave the anaesthetist a bit of trouble and he couldn't get a line in to put me to sleep. It’s pretty scary, lying in a cold operating room, listening to the people who are going to be operating on you getting ready. I wanted to be asleep by this time! He decided to put me to sleep with the gas, and then what seemed like minutes later, I was waking up in the recovery room… crying. This is the second time I've been under general anaesthetic and I woke up the first time crying too. I think it’s the disorientation, it’s so weird to go to sleep in one place and wake up in the other without having any memory of the sleep — no tossing or turning, no moments of lighter sleep — just awake and asleep.

This is the point to mention that the nurses at St Andrew’s were brilliant. A chat while they’re wheeling you to the theatre, a gentle touch of the brow while you’re waiting to be put out, holding your hand and helping you deep breath through a panic attack are all things that comfort you in those situations.

My mouth was completely numb from a local anaesthetic, my tongue was like a dead slug and then they wrapped this chipmunk cheek-icepack around my face — super attractive. Even the tip of my nose was numb! At this point, I was really regretting the decision to have my teeth out. It’s not pleasant at all to not be able to feel your face.

In second recovery, they gave me a cup of water. This was a huge disaster as when she came back, it was all down the front of my hospital gown, along with a fair bit of the red stuff. I think I resembled my Zombie Snow White for real at this point.

I'm pretty sure this is what I looked like when the nurse came in...

But then I got dressed, drank a bit more water and my sister came to pick me up. The trip home took forever and I cried and whinged a fair bit. The worst part was that when the anaesthetic started to wear off, I couldn’t take any pain relief because I couldn’t swallow properly to get it down. I kept waking up during the night and testing if I’d stopped being numb – getting progressively more worried at 3am when most of my face, minus my chin, most of my tongue and bottom lip hadn’t come back. I panicked because I knew there was a risk that when the wisdoms came out, that the nerves that look after that part of your mouth could be affected. The surgeon had told me it could come back, but it might also be permanent.

The chipmunk look is totally pinup, right? 

When I woke again around 5am, I could feel the rest of my face, but the relief was short-lived because that’s when the pain really set in. Luckily though, this was the sort of pain that could be managed with a good dose of painkillers, lots of sleep and quite a bit of whinging. My worst day was probably Sunday, which was the day that all the grossness in my tummy affected me as much as my pain levels and made me feel quite sick. It was also probably the day I looked the most swollen.
It took me around five days to feel right enough to function, and today, ten days after surgery, I have some pain, but more a dull ache that is manageable with Neurofen.

This was the worst day, and I was super-swollen

I spent a week on a liquid diet of smoothies, chocolate milkshakes, custard, mashed potato and mashed sweet potato, poached eggs and soup and returned to a ‘soft’ solid diet on Friday. I thought the liquid diet would be torture, but it wasn’t too bad. The soft diet is harder work as I’ve got to chew in the front part of my mouth, tiny mouthfuls.

If you’re about to have mouth surgery, my tips are basically the tips I was given by friends:

• Sleep upright, either in a recliner or propped up with many, many pillows. Your back will not thank you, but it’s much more comfortable for your face, plus it stops bruising and helps the swelling go down quickly. I had zero bruising (unless you count my arm which was bruised from multiple attempts to get a line in.
• Go shopping for lots of liquid food before and/or make soup. I was lucky, I had a chief soup maker around to make me some.
• Try and get a bit of sun. I sat outside with my family for a bit on Sunday and it definitely made me feel more human (I didn’t look it though).
• Icepack always. They don’t do much in terms of preventing bruising, but they definitely make you feel better.

In a couple of days, I'll tell you all about getting my Invisalign started!