A Bit of History

I have now been in braces for 19 months. Initially, I had i-braces which were cool because they are metal braces on the insides of your teeth. Essentially they are designed for people who feel self conscious about having braces, like adults and apparently people who play wind instruments. The i-braces were great except for the fact that my tongue would hit them when I tried to speak and I sounded like I had a lisp. Also, the wires on my bottom braces stuck right into my tongue so that everytime I swallowed my tongue would get cut up. The orthodontist solved this by putting a piece of composite on the ends of the bottom wires, however, the composite would fall off frequently and I was forced to spend a good deal of time traveling back and forth to the orthodontist office in order to have them repaired.

i-braces pic:
At the beginning of my treatment I was told that in order to correct my bite I was going to need to have lower jaw surgery and so we have been working towards that ever since. In April of this year they switched me over to regular clear porcelain braces in order to get me ready for surgery. As much of a pain as the i-braces were, the regular braces might be worse. Instead of being an adult with a slight lisp, I am now a 27-year old who looks like a 16 year old with braces.

When I first got the braces on I was horribly embarrassed and would try not to smile or laugh or try and talk without showing my teeth which simply resulted in people thinking there was something wrong with me and it probably drew more attention to the fact that I actually had braces in the first place.

So below is a picture of my teeth in April when they switched the braces from back to front. My teeth are pretty much straight but as you can see I have a pretty bad overbite which this surgery will attempt to correct (in addition to giving me the Jay Leno jaw I always wanted). My orthodontist switched her website recently so I do not have any pictures from when I started my treatment, but I will hopefully get some soon and be able to post them so you will be able to see how far I have already come.