Success!

Guess whaaaaaaaaat? Got my braces off today. I did! You wanna see photos, don't you. Okay, okay okay. I'll do that whole before and after thing. Except I seem to have lost my before picture. When I do find it I will post it. For now, here goes...

With braces:


This afternoon:



my teeth

I had a hard time getting a photo of my “permanent” (two-year) retainer on my lower teeth, but I'm not sure I can get a better one, so here's a photo I am borrowing from a Danish website that better illustrates the retainer affixed to my bottom teeth:


not my teeth

For two years I will need to use threaded floss on the bottom six front teeth.

I have to wear a clear retainer over my top teeth all the time for eight weeks:



I cannot for the life of me pronounce S's or soft C's with it in. My real first name has one of those in it. It thucks. I'm all lithpy again. I had to record a phone message for my work phone today and I had to remove the retainer or else it sounded like I was 6 years old without my two front teeth and with my thumb thuck in my mouth. Anyway, real point of telling you about the retainer: I won't be doing teeth whitening until I only have to wear the retainer at nighttime.

I don't know the terminology to differ between the clear retainer that covers all of my teeth (my co-worker said her orthodontist called it a splint) but in 8 weeks I will begin wearing a retainer that sits on the roof of my mouth:



Like this one, only in
fuchsia instead of the scary
patriotism color palette

Since I will only wear that at night for sleeping my co-worker and the ortho assistant suggested choosing a fun color, so I went with fuchsia. Don't have that retainer yet, but when I do I'll post about it.

Two things I can now eat with reckless abandon -- gum and peanuts:



Yippy!