My Teeth Are FREE At Last!

After enduring 15 months of torture, I had my braces removed today!! I was very nervous to have the debanding done because I had porcelain brackets, which do not come off very easily. I premedicated myself and listened to music during the procedure, and before I knew it, the orthodontic assistant had popped off the entire top row! Well, to say "popped off" makes it sound kind of pleasant. It's actually more of a crunching and breaking technique. The brackets pretty much just shatter as they remove them, sometimes they come off in one piece, sometimes it takes several attempts to remove one completely. The pain was not near as bad as I thought it would be (perhaps thanks to the OB-prescribed Vicodin that I took one hour before my appointment), and the procedure went much more smoothly than I had anticipated. I was SO relieved! Once she removed all but 3 brackets (for different reasons) and scraped all the adhesive off my teeth, one of the doctors removed the brackets left behind and used a little sander-type tool to reshape some of my teeth. I was ecstatic when I finally got to see the results! My teeth look great! They feel wonderful, too. They're so smooth! Different people told me to expect my lips to feel too big for my face, for my teeth to feel like they're going to fall out of my head, or my mouth to be really sore for a few days afterward. I have not experienced one of those things! In fact, this afternoon, Will and I went to Texas Roadhouse about two and a half hours after having my braces removed, and I ate steak! Today was the first day the restaurant was open, and we had been waiting to eat there. It was delicious! It was so nice to eat and not worry about food being stuck in my wires and brackets. What a nice change! I love my new teeth! YAY!! I was hoping to get them taken off before Maya arrived, and I made it!