In the summer of my sophomore year, after suffering from horrible headaches and jaw-locking episodes on a fairly regular basis, my orthodontist—whose name is Bucky Schmelzer—told me I had two options to correct the problem. The first option was to have my jaw broken and wired up for several months while everything healed and corrected. The second option was to wear a sort of retainer that had giant plastic blocks that literally pulled my jaw forward and allowed my teeth to shift and grow together. Then I would need braces and the process would take approximately two years. Neither option had me jumping up and down, but I went with plan B simply because I'm not very big on liquid diets or the inability to talk. I was still under my parents' insurance, I was ready for the pain to stop, I wasn't dating anyone, and I had always wanted straight teeth, so what did I have to lose?
When I received my first retainers, which my friends called “the chompers” and “tainers,” I thought Dr. Schmelzer must be kidding. They were HUGE and barely fit in my mouth, and I couldn't talk without mass quantities of drool and spit shooting out. The worst part was that I had to eat with them fastened in my mouth. Evidently my TMJ would only be corrected if I kept my chompers in at all times, including during meals and while sleeping. I looked around at my supportive friends, tried hard not to eat sticky foods, and hoped the next few years would go by quickly.
Since I couldn't talk in my chompers without slushing my “S's” and slurping the extra spit from my mouth, I avoided speaking up in class for a while. And because my retainers were in my 98 degree mouth 24-7, they quickly became disgusting and required much brushing and cleaning. I began wondering if I'd had braces back when I was 14—like everyone else in my class, if all this spitty humiliation could have been avoided. I finally adopted a “better late than never” attitude, although somewhere along the way I became more excited about the prospect of my teeth being perfectly straight. I forgot that I was putting physical appearance on the back burner for a few years to fix my jaw; it wasn't supposed to be a cosmetic overhaul .
Whenever I went home on breaks from class I visited Dr. Schmelzer; he poked and twisted and shaped my jaw like a piece of bony, gummy, slobbery clay. I would sit in the waiting room with the pre-teen girls and boys and skim through the “Bop” magazines featuring pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic. The girls would smile at me with a look of sympathy, and I would smile back showing them what the Guinness Book of World Records retainers looked like.
After a series of changes and adjustments to my horrible retainers, almost one year after my re-construction began, I was fitted with semi-normal looking braces, and only had to wear the chompers at night to keep my jaw in place. I was 22, in my senior year of college, and I had a mouth full of metal complete with numerous rubber bands, but I was excited about having a lovely jaw and picket fence teeth, and Bucky promised we would get the braces off by my college graduation.
Dr. Shmelzer pulled through and my braces were scheduled to come off just in time for me to receive my diploma. Surely I had become the beautiful butterfly that had been hiding inside my slobbery dental cocoon for the past two years. Surely the modeling agencies would be asking, who is this girl, and where has she been hiding? Surely Dr. Schmelzer was going to get hundreds of recommendations from many other female college students.
But when I looked in the mirror, expecting the perfectly straight teeth to match my perfect new jaw, I saw the same teeth that had been there before, only there were noticeable gaps all around each of them. When he asked, “What do you think?” in an excited voice, I could only say, “Thank you for fixing my TMJ.”
Then he handed me my new, very normal looking retainers and told me I needed to wear them at all times for the next 6-12 months, and eventually only at night. He went on to explain that my teeth were still moving, and the retainers were going to bring them all together, back to the picket fences I had envisioned. I was relieved to know that we weren't through yet, even though it meant another year of waiting. I decided that dental beauty was painful, and required a lot of patience.
My teeth did come back together, and although I don't know if they were ever award-winning, they were straight and I was smiling more. Unfortunately, one night while I was folding laundry I discovered my priceless retainers, the retainers that were supposed to last forever, half-melted in a ball of plastic in the pocket of my robe. There was nothing I could do so I threw them away and made an appointment with a local orthodontist the next day. I was soon fitted with new retainers and was smiling again.
Shortly after I received my new retainers I got married, and in 2005 my son was born. I had been consistently wearing my retainers at night for almost 5 years by that time, and my teeth had not moved at all. Then I did something really stupid. My son had colic and I was on the verge of insanity anyway when all of a sudden we both had infections, so I began sanitizing everything in sight. I was caught up in a boiling sanitation frenzy and threw my retainers into the pot with everything else. Although I almost immediately pulled them back out, my retainers had instantly been twisted beyond recognition.
As a stay-at-home mom with minimal dental insurance, I decided it was time to end my quest for picket fence teeth and a jaw that doesn't pop like there is a bottle rocket in my mouth. In less than a decade my teeth and I have come full circle, and although many celebrities (e.i. Tom Cruise and Gwen Stefani) have paved the way to make adult braces more glamorous, I think for now I'm going to stick with what I have and hope for the best. And as soon as it becomes more cost effective to get dentures, then I'm giving Bucky Schmelzer a call.
When I received my first retainers, which my friends called “the chompers” and “tainers,” I thought Dr. Schmelzer must be kidding. They were HUGE and barely fit in my mouth, and I couldn't talk without mass quantities of drool and spit shooting out. The worst part was that I had to eat with them fastened in my mouth. Evidently my TMJ would only be corrected if I kept my chompers in at all times, including during meals and while sleeping. I looked around at my supportive friends, tried hard not to eat sticky foods, and hoped the next few years would go by quickly.
Since I couldn't talk in my chompers without slushing my “S's” and slurping the extra spit from my mouth, I avoided speaking up in class for a while. And because my retainers were in my 98 degree mouth 24-7, they quickly became disgusting and required much brushing and cleaning. I began wondering if I'd had braces back when I was 14—like everyone else in my class, if all this spitty humiliation could have been avoided. I finally adopted a “better late than never” attitude, although somewhere along the way I became more excited about the prospect of my teeth being perfectly straight. I forgot that I was putting physical appearance on the back burner for a few years to fix my jaw; it wasn't supposed to be a cosmetic overhaul .
Whenever I went home on breaks from class I visited Dr. Schmelzer; he poked and twisted and shaped my jaw like a piece of bony, gummy, slobbery clay. I would sit in the waiting room with the pre-teen girls and boys and skim through the “Bop” magazines featuring pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic. The girls would smile at me with a look of sympathy, and I would smile back showing them what the Guinness Book of World Records retainers looked like.
After a series of changes and adjustments to my horrible retainers, almost one year after my re-construction began, I was fitted with semi-normal looking braces, and only had to wear the chompers at night to keep my jaw in place. I was 22, in my senior year of college, and I had a mouth full of metal complete with numerous rubber bands, but I was excited about having a lovely jaw and picket fence teeth, and Bucky promised we would get the braces off by my college graduation.
Dr. Shmelzer pulled through and my braces were scheduled to come off just in time for me to receive my diploma. Surely I had become the beautiful butterfly that had been hiding inside my slobbery dental cocoon for the past two years. Surely the modeling agencies would be asking, who is this girl, and where has she been hiding? Surely Dr. Schmelzer was going to get hundreds of recommendations from many other female college students.
But when I looked in the mirror, expecting the perfectly straight teeth to match my perfect new jaw, I saw the same teeth that had been there before, only there were noticeable gaps all around each of them. When he asked, “What do you think?” in an excited voice, I could only say, “Thank you for fixing my TMJ.”
Then he handed me my new, very normal looking retainers and told me I needed to wear them at all times for the next 6-12 months, and eventually only at night. He went on to explain that my teeth were still moving, and the retainers were going to bring them all together, back to the picket fences I had envisioned. I was relieved to know that we weren't through yet, even though it meant another year of waiting. I decided that dental beauty was painful, and required a lot of patience.
My teeth did come back together, and although I don't know if they were ever award-winning, they were straight and I was smiling more. Unfortunately, one night while I was folding laundry I discovered my priceless retainers, the retainers that were supposed to last forever, half-melted in a ball of plastic in the pocket of my robe. There was nothing I could do so I threw them away and made an appointment with a local orthodontist the next day. I was soon fitted with new retainers and was smiling again.
Shortly after I received my new retainers I got married, and in 2005 my son was born. I had been consistently wearing my retainers at night for almost 5 years by that time, and my teeth had not moved at all. Then I did something really stupid. My son had colic and I was on the verge of insanity anyway when all of a sudden we both had infections, so I began sanitizing everything in sight. I was caught up in a boiling sanitation frenzy and threw my retainers into the pot with everything else. Although I almost immediately pulled them back out, my retainers had instantly been twisted beyond recognition.
As a stay-at-home mom with minimal dental insurance, I decided it was time to end my quest for picket fence teeth and a jaw that doesn't pop like there is a bottle rocket in my mouth. In less than a decade my teeth and I have come full circle, and although many celebrities (e.i. Tom Cruise and Gwen Stefani) have paved the way to make adult braces more glamorous, I think for now I'm going to stick with what I have and hope for the best. And as soon as it becomes more cost effective to get dentures, then I'm giving Bucky Schmelzer a call.
2 comments:
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Having braces is kinda annoying for some of us but because if we want to have a beautiful smile, we must have to wear them. When I was in college too, I had a terrible teeth so I decided to go to a Raleigh cosmetic dentist and get my braces done. And now, I'm confident smiling all the time because my teeth are aligned do. Raleigh cosmetic dentistry office is one of the great dental offices in our town.
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