Day 22 - 23 : Orthodontist visit #2

Day 22

I'm seeing my orthodontist tomorrow, the last time I saw them was on Day 10. Hopefully he'll set up elastics such that my teeth will start to meet properly. Right now my teeth still only meet at one point, and there's a slight offset in the midline between my lower jaw and upper jaw (about 1mm, less than half a tooth offset). The teeth are also twisted slightly.

It'll be exciting to see the teeth move to the correct location over the next few weeks! I'm just going to pretend it'll be a pain-free experience.

Day 23

The orthodontist said my teeth were coming together better. This is a surprise, as they felt about as bad as always. He added one more elastic to the right side, to help bring the molars back together is my guess.

Also, he ground down the two teeth that were contacting! The explanation was as follows; Those two teeth have never come together the right way before in my life, so the tooth never wore down from normal usage to fit together nicely. Now that surgery has brought the teeth into the correct positions, he's ground the teeth a little bit to help guide them to the right position. I can already feel my bite coming together slightly better now.

Day 23

I asked them about the mid-line mismatch and the cant. They didn't see any issues in the teeth or cant that would cause any concerns. Whether this means it'll be fixed with orthodontics or is just going to be there but not really matter besides aesthetics, I'm not so sure about. They're quite good at dodging that question. I'll try again in my next 2-week appointment. Obviously if there was something they could do they are already doing it. I'm happy that my bite is already good enough that I can even notice these issues, where as before surgery everything was so off I couldn't really notice (except that midline).

They added two little rubber bumper pads to my lower front teeth, to provide a cushion for my upper teeth when closing. Before the upper teeth touched the metal brackets on my lower sometimes. Apparently metal is safer than ceramic, because unlike ceramic the metal brackets give a little, so they hurt the teeth less. Either way, rubber is better than metal or ceramic, so it's nice that they're there.

One new thing to do now is jaw exercises! I currently can fit 1 finger into my mouth. The orthodontist gave me a goal, of by the next 2 weeks to get to 3 fingers. That... seems like a stretch.

For the exercises, once in a day, I should put on warm compresses on my cheeks to warm up the muscles. Then I put two fingers side-by-side in my mouth, and then slowly turn the fingers vertical pushing on my teeth to spread the jaws. This isn't for the jaw bones itself, but the jaw muscles that have been tight due to the surgery + wires.

To celebrate progress, I ordered some Shalimar indian food (chicken tikka masala!) to-go and spent a good while ripping apart the chicken with a spoon before eating it. Curry works well though as a post-op meal otherwise.

On to Day 24, where things get real with the Nintendo Switch.