Got my braces off!

After 25 months of dental torture, my teeth are free!

I love my new smile!

 Guess I could learn to brush my hair  now that I've got this terrific straight toothed smile to show off. Don't want to deter focus from my fabulous (and expensive) grin.  The cutie-pie I'm holding in this picture is my grandson, Hank.



This is how I started the process back in September of 2010, with the removal of a wisdom tooth:

In October 2010, I looked like this:

December 2010, can really see some teeth have started to move:

In May 2011, I still had a lot of crowding and I looked like this:

I'm trying to remember when exactly it was, but I ended up having four molars yanked out to make room for all of these extra large teeth of mine. My jaw is small and my teeth are big, not an ideal situation. I thought I had them out in January of 2011, but it took a while for the other teeth to fill in the gaps.

Here I am at the end of 2011, lots of progress! What you can't see are the big gaps where my 4 molars were removed in the back.

June 2012, even more straight! At this point I am sick to death of having the braces too. I just needed those gaps in the back to close up and the little gaps in the bottom row to pinch together. What you can't see is that my profile has drastically improved! I didn't realize how much my teeth stuck out, and then my lips stuck out over them. Have I been walking around all my life looking like I'm ready to pucker up and give kisses? No wonder I always think people are very friendly, I've been looking like I'm going to kiss everyone all this time. No more!

That brings us to now, the fall of 2012. The braces are finally off and my teeth are nice and straight! For the first time in my life, I can floss. Exciting, huh? I still can't believe I went through this. I'm glad I did it, but I hated doing it. It hurt and it was frustrating. But, it's done! If I had it to do all over again though, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do it. But if I did, I would choose metal brackets over plastic.  Metal brackets work faster and they do not wear down like the plastic ones do. The plastic brackets are harder for the dental assistants to work with, meaning more pain and torture for me.

Now, I have to see if I can do anything about my hair. I think I'll ask Santa for a hairbrush, looks like I haven't brushed it in the last two years.