From Start to Finish

There's nothing really new to report.  Still wearing my retainers full time and will be doing so until July.  After that, I'll only have to wear them while I sleep.  Here are a couple groups of pictures I put together.  The one shows the progress from the front view and the other is the view of the roof of my mouth from start to finish.  Enjoy!


Front View - Top two pictures are from before surgery.  The next three pictures are during the expansion process and the final picture is from when my braces came off.

Roof View - The top two pictures are from before surgery.  Notice the expander in the middle two pictures getting wider.  The bottom left picture shows the full expansion and the last picture is after my braces came off.

Free at Last!

[ (January 25th, 2015) (1 year and 11 months post surgery, 1 year and 10 months post braces) ]

On January 9th, the braces came off!  In under 2 years, I went from a mouth full of problems to a perfect smile.  It's been a crazy ride of expanding my palate, a huge tooth gap, using wax as a fake tooth, and then bringing it all back together.

For the next 6 months, I have to wear a retainer all the time besides eating and brushing my teeth.  After that, I'll only have to wear the retainers when I sleep.  The orthodontist also put a permanent retainer on the backs of my bottom front six teeth.  This is pretty much the finish line to my story.  When I get some extra time, I'll put together some before and after pics.  Here's the finished product as of now.

Permanent retainer on the back of my bottom front teeth

With the retainers on

Early Christmas Present!!

[ (December 20th, 2014) (1 year and 10 months post surgery, 1 year and 9 months post braces) ]

Since the last time I posted 4 months ago, there have only been a few changes.  My teeth were pretty much straight, but there were some "black triangles" that they wanted to work on.  Since my gums have receded a bit, there were small triangle shaped spaces between some of my teeth.  Every 3 weeks, I would have an appointment and they would file in between my teeth at the bottoms so the spaces would disappear at the top.

Saw the orthodontist 2 days ago and received awesome news!  At my next appointment on January 9th, they are going to remove my braces a month short of the original 2 year projection.  The next post you'll see from me will be braces free!


Goodbye black triangles (top photo from August, bottom photo from today)

Something's Missing

[ (August 21st, 2014) (1 year and 6 months post surgery, 1 year and 5 months post braces) ]

It's been over a year and a half since the SARPE surgery took place and finally the roof of my mouth is free.  They took the device out a few months back and I couldn't be happier. The area was tender at first, but it was a whole lot better than having food constantly stuck up there.

The orthodontist was worried that I would need additional surgery to pull my lower jaw in.  Every six weeks the orthodontist gave me new bands to position differently on my teeth to try to pull my jaw into place and to everyone's surprise, it worked.  It looks like I won't need another surgery!  For the most part my teeth are aligned and there are only a few gaps which are very small.  Hopefully I can get these braces off soon!

This is the positioning of the bands now.  They are hooked to the 4th and 5th tooth on the top and bottom row on both sides.  I only have to wear them when I'm sleeping now instead of all day.

You can see that the top row of teeth are fitting over the bottom row nicely and that most gaps are closed or are minimal.

No more SARPE device, I'm free!

Over a Year in Now

[ (April 13th, 2014) (1 year and 2 months post surgery, 1 year and 1 month post braces) ]

It's been almost a half a year since my last post and nothing much has really changed since then.  I still see the orthodontist every six weeks.  They usually give me stronger wires every time I go in and they'll tie teeth together differently to close all the gaps.  The only difference is, now that my top row of teeth are becoming straighter, I'm starting to develop an underbite.  From the beginning of this process, they told me that an underbite would be a possibility and that I may need a second surgery to pull my bottom jaw back.  To try to avoid that surgery, they have me connecting bands from my top row of teeth to my bottom row of teeth.  Hopefully that works out so I don't have to go under the knife again.


Here you can kind of see the underbite, my top front two teeth are tucked behind the bottom teeth.  The little triangle gap between those teeth is slowly going away too.

Here's the view with the bands in.

Over 9 Months

[ (November 18th, 2013) (9 months post surgery, 8 months post braces) ]

It's been a few months since my last post but really nothing much has changed.  All the crazy gap pictures are in the past and now it's just the slow process of making all my teeth straight.  Every six weeks I go to the orthodontist and get stronger wires and new bands.  So really there's been nothing interesting going on at all.  Here's some pictures of how my teeth are progressing.

From Top to Bottom

[ (August 4th, 2013) (172 days post surgery, 132 days since full expansion, 150 days post braces) ]

I've been to two appointments over the past month.  The first appointment was routine maintenance.  The second appointment, which was six days ago, they added brackets to the fourth tooth on each side of my top row of teeth and on my bottom row of teeth.  I'm fully braced up, from top to bottom.  The orthodontist decided not to add rubber bands to the braces like they usually do.  He said he wants the teeth to straighten out more before they start to pull them together again.  All the gaps are disappearing so I don't mind waiting.  Even though they wanted me to wait four weeks to come back instead of the normal two weeks, I'm going back tomorrow because they forgot to put the stopper on the top wire.  Now, my one front tooth is starting to slide over too far on to the other side.


The front tooth is off center now!