Take out your fucking retainer, put it in your purse

[sovay]

I've had to get a year's worth of braces because the alternative was my teeth grinding into one another at angles that were causing them to splinter and would necessitate things like crowns and lots of composite if not realigned. The effects of this on my daily life are substantially nastier than I was led to believe and I don't know what the adjustment period is going to be like. Things inside my head are kind of terrible right now.

Hana Vojáčková's Milk & Sea. I think I love best the Icelandic mermaid with her trout-silver tail and the rill of turf-breaking rock that looks like a stream, but there is something about the German mermaid waiting for her bus, or maybe just watching the nighttime, commercial sea, that is a story all in one frame. I shouldn't write it before I write something with trees. Right now I am having trouble believing I will ever write anything, full stop.

Comments

[yhlee]

I had braces for 4+ years as a consequence of mostly not getting dental care until 8th grade. You have my sympathies. :-/

[sovay]

You have my sympathies.

Thank you. I've had traditional wire-and-bracket braces; I thought this was going to be less invasive. The difficult part is that it turns out not.

[phi]

Ouch. That sounds unpleasant. Have you had orthodontia before?

[sovay]

Have you had orthodontia before?

Retainer in fifth grade. Headgear in seventh. Braces until, I think, eleventh grade. The jaw-clenching and grinding caused by the chronic pain of the last eight years wrecked most of it. These are Invisalign braces, which I was recommended for a variety of reasons including that they would interfere less in my day-to-day life; this appears to be entirely untrue. I know it's the first day, but right now I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to make it through the next year without ceasing to eat entirely.

[kate_nepveu]

Oh dear. Tooth-grinding/clenching is a thing I have experience with; do you want to talk about it?

[sovay]

Tooth-grinding/clenching is a thing I have experience with; do you want to talk about it?

Not in terms of advice, I think; it's not a new problem. See replies to phi here and ladymondegreen on LJ. I've worn a nightguard for the last three and a half years, but in the fall I was informed there was too much damage built up. It isn't even a matter of clenching at night: at this point my normal bite causes disproportionate wear and tear. The dentist wanted to start the braces then and there. I didn't have the money. In retrospect, I'm very glad I was able to eat like a normal person for my wedding and the holidays, at least.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

You made my day better by linking to that transcript of Pete Seger in the previous entry. It actually had an excellent answer to a situation I was helping with elsewhere, and gave some comfort to people who needed it.

I hope the dental work is nowhere near as dreadful as you fear. I have braces coping strategies for you if it is dreadful (did they give you dental wax? If not, poke me and I will tell you about it, and also about the merits of easily obtained numbing agents, like Orajel.)

I had three years of braces followed by extreme jaw surgery (both jaws broken and reset) followed by 5 years of maintenance, so I am something of an old hand at getting around the stupidity of braces and other dental appliances, and what one has to do to keep them from staining your teeth.

I love the bus waiting mermaid best, but that is perhaps because I spent so much of my youth waiting for buses.

[sovay]

It actually had an excellent answer to a situation I was helping with elsewhere, and gave some comfort to people who needed it.

I think that's wonderful. It is very fitting that he should be helping people with words spoken sixty years ago.

I have braces coping strategies for you if it is dreadful (did they give you dental wax? If not, poke me and I will tell you about it, and also about the merits of easily obtained numbing agents, like Orajel.)

They're Invisalign braces rather than wire-and-bracket (which I had for most of middle and high school), which is part of the problem. The number of composite attachments required to be bonded to my teeth in order to exert the necessary forces was far higher than I had been expecting, so that when I take the aligners out to eat, I have a very spiky mouthful of composite that my lips and tongue are doing their best to snag on at every opportunity, and the fact that I can only eat or drink with the aligners out and then need to floss and brush my teeth before replacing them and they need to be in my mouth a minimum of twenty-two hours a day is a huge issue, because I am not the sort of person who can eat one meal in the morning and one meal in the evening and not have my body try to crash on me. The one-meal plan is not a good idea. It's what happens when I am too stressed to feel hunger and have to force myself to treat dinner as a real thing; I associate it with very bad phases of my life. I carry clementines around in winter so that I can snack on them. I buy herbal chai from Porter Square Books because they're one of the few places in the Boston area that serves a chai latte that won't give me a migraine. This week I've been living on cough drops. All of these things are apparently no go for the next year. The dentist even tried to discourage me from drinking tea, telling me an anecdote about his brother who insisted on drinking coffee with his Invisalign in: "Did it affect the treatment?"—"Well, there was the staining . . ." I drink tea like I breathe. It's my major source of hydration in the winter because I am so damn cold all the time. Because my relationship with food is complicated at the best of times, I asked multiple times in advance whether this kind of orthodontics would affect what I could eat. It was perfectly accurate that I was told no, it wouldn't; I didn't realize it was the wrong axis of question. I am actively worried that I will simply stop eating because it's so much trouble. It took an effort to persuade myself to make dinner tonight and by that point I'd been hungry for hours.

And there's just the fact that it fucking hurts, but that I expected. The rest is taking me aback and it's very upsetting.

You win on the extreme jaw surgery front, though. I'm sorry.

I love the bus waiting mermaid best, but that is perhaps because I spent so much of my youth waiting for buses.

If she speaks to you, write her.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Damn about the braces. I know they will prevent all sorts of pain and poverty down the line, but they hurt *NOW*. Ouch. Sympathy.

The German mermaid's wet sidewalk looks like the river of blood in "Thomas the Rhymer."

Nine

[sovay]

The German mermaid's wet sidewalk looks like the river of blood in "Thomas the Rhymer."

DUDE I AM TRYING TO THINK ABOUT TREES THAT'S NOT HELPING.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Damn. Damn, I'm sorry. *hugs if wanted*

I love the bus-stop mermaid, also the one in the snow.

You'll write again. I have faith.

[sovay]

*hugs if wanted*

Sure. My arms don't hurt.

*hugs*

(I came home this afternoon and crawled into bed with derspatchel and was very upset for a while.)

I love the bus-stop mermaid, also the one in the snow.

The one in the snow is interesting because she's the only direct interaction with water in its natural habitat. (I've been trying to figure out what the Portuguese mermaid is doing—it almost looks like laundry, drawing up cloth as white as moving water.) I love the winter wear for the human parts of her, while the tail rests happily in the ice-edged pond.

You'll write again. I have faith.

Thank you. Part of what I'm feeling is that I was already dealing with nearly unendurable levels of pain, and then I paid someone a great deal of money to add more on top. Add the disruption of daily routine and I am feeling as though I don't know how I am going to manage the next week, never mind the full coming year. I don't want 2014 to be the year that was ruined by my braces and my inability to deal. I just wanted to enjoy it. I didn't think that was unreasonable of me.

[zdenka]

Sorry to hear it.

Perhaps I'm being too literal about this, but I can't help wondering how the mermaid is going to get onto and off the bus.

[sovay]

Perhaps I'm being too literal about this, but I can't help wondering how the mermaid is going to get onto and off the bus.

Maybe she's waiting for someone. Maybe they have a boat.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

The wheelchair lift, of course.

[chomiji]

I'm sorry about the braces! Was there a particular reason for the Invisalign? (Other than that it's the usual thing for adults, because they usually don't want to be bracefaces.)

[sovay]

Was there a particular reason for the Invisalign? (Other than that it's the usual thing for adults, because they usually don't want to be bracefaces.)

I was told it would be faster and less of an interference in my day-to-day life. (I stressed that the cosmetic aspects were not important to me: I didn't want to plunge back into the joy of orthodontics if it wasn't medically necessary and I didn't care about wearing a mouthful of wires if it was.) The first may still be true; we'll see how it goes. Day-to-day, though, it looks like it's going to be pretty awful.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Dear gods, that isn't even fair - that crossing your sight. As excited as I am by the process of your forest, those pictures are downright taunting you.

Also, holy crap, that sounds terrible (I read the logistical difficulties with simply eating). I offer hugs as hugs might be needed.

[sovay]

Also, holy crap, that sounds terrible (I read the logistical difficulties with simply eating). I offer hugs as hugs might be needed.

Today sucked way the hell more than it had any right to!

*hugs*

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry to hear this. I wish you swift improvement with the orthodontic situation and all the rest. *hugs*, if you'd wish to have them.

Thanks for sharing the mermaids. I wonder if her sitting in that German bus stop is in any way a similar act to diving such as might be done by one of our land-based kind.

[red-queen.livejournal.com]

Never had orthodonture. so I can only imagine what you're going thru and it sounds miserable. One does get used to hanging by one's thumbs... just get thru each day and let the year take care of itself. And don't forget about soup as a source of hydration and calories in the winter.

If you can't write about trees, write about teeth. Teeth that look like trees.

[gwynnega]

I'm sorry to hear about the braces. Braces can be painful, but the problems with eating sound especially miserable.

[sovay]

Braces can be painful, but the problems with eating sound especially miserable.

I need better information. At the moment, I'm under-hydrated because I don't usually drink refrigerator water when it's cold out, I drink herbal tea. I really don't feel I was sufficiently warned about the ramifications and there's nothing to do about it now.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You will write again.

I would rather be a toothless crone, and indeed no doubt I shall be. But when I am I shall think of all the posts I have read from Americans on LJ about this kind of torture, and I will gum my soup and be content.

[sovay]

But when I am I shall think of all the posts I have read from Americans on LJ about this kind of torture, and I will gum my soup and be content.

I am afraid it doesn't help very much at the moment to know that you consider me a valuable source of schadenfreude.

I want to write more, so I will have to. It is just difficult to feel that I have never gotten a break from the level my body took in chronic pain last spring and I won't for another twelve months.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I hope you find a quiet corner in your mind that you can pull around yourself like a true comforter.

[sovay]

I hope you find a quiet corner in your mind that you can pull around yourself like a true comforter.

Thank you. At the moment I am just trying to sort out my body.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I like the mermaids' sweaters. I suppose they wash them in cold water.

[sovay]

I like the mermaids' sweaters. I suppose they wash them in cold water.

Fortunately, it looks as though they all have that option!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Stuff happening in the mouth is a particular form of torture--which is why it gets used as a particular form of torture.

Doctors also inveterately underestimate the pain and disruption something will cause :-(

Of course you will write something. You have been amazing in the last three months. Little Wittgenstein may want to tell you you never will write again, but little Spock must say that logically speaking, the trend is quite to the contrary.

[sovay]

Stuff happening in the mouth is a particular form of torture--which is why it gets used as a particular form of torture.

I didn't even have anything against dentists! My childhood dentist reminded me of a hobbit and my orthodontist in middle and high school raised calla lilies! I find it very unfair that in full adulthood I'm having to feel prickly and resentful and vaguely nightmarish about a discipline I never took personally before.

Little Wittgenstein may want to tell you you never will write again, but little Spock must say that logically speaking, the trend is quite to the contrary.

Thank you. I am working on trusting that. I just feel like all my brain is going toward keeping in motion, rather than collapse.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I'm especially sorry it's happening when you didn't expect it.

I don't know if this will be of any help to you, but my experience of dentists has been that they cannot understand the concept of herbal teas and tisanes. It's like dental school knocks previous knowledge out of their heads and replaces it with the idea that "tea" is always a very hot, very dark brown, liquid containing lots of tannic acid. If a patient says they're talking about "not regular caffeinated tea, just something herbal like mint tea," that somehow translates to chemically-decaffeinated black tea flavored with mint. So I don't think you need to worry about herbal teas (even if the dentist was not exaggerating the problem, as others have suggested.)

It may be possible to drink with a straw with the aligners in. At the very least, you could take the aligners out, drink a cup of goats milk or tea with honey, rinse with a mouthful of water, and put the aligners back in. I think some of that very emphatic "floss immediately after eating" is based on the idea that you'll be eating pastrami and rye bread, or at least caramel corn. Clementines are very much easier on your teeth.

I had nightmarish problems with tooth sensitivity until one dentist told me that fluoride helped, and prescribed an expensive, foul-tasting, high-fluoride mouthwash. It doesn't help everyone, obviously, but my tooth sensitivity (especially cold sensitivity) gets significantly better when I use the fluoridated mouthwash designed for kids.

[sovay]

If a patient says they're talking about "not regular caffeinated tea, just something herbal like mint tea," that somehow translates to chemically-decaffeinated black tea flavored with mint.

I stressed that caffeine gives me migraines and I don't even drink decaf. I am planning to call back on Monday; I will ask at that time if there's something about the heat of the tea that's prohibitive or if they're just worrying about the nonexistent tannins.

At the very least, you could take the aligners out, drink a cup of goats milk or tea with honey, rinse with a mouthful of water, and put the aligners back in.

The problem is that at this point it is physically difficult and painful to remove and replace the aligners; it may become easier as my teeth shift into positions where less wrangling is required to get all of the attachment points lining up, but right now it's not a quick process. I am trying to find the balance between things that are healthy to retain in my routine and things that just cause me more pain. When I made derspatchel's lemon cake yesterday, I made a point of taking out the aligners and eating the leftover batter, because that is a pleasure of cake-making it seemed important not to give up. I take out the aligners to shower; brushing my teeth before bed is part of the winding-down ritual. I haven't drunk goat's milk before showering for the last three nights and I'm trying to figure out if I'll stick with that.

It doesn't help everyone, obviously, but my tooth sensitivity (especially cold sensitivity) gets significantly better when I use the fluoridated mouthwash designed for kids.

I'm already brushing with a toothpaste for sensitive teeth. I asked about a rinse when I called back on Friday; it was brushed off with everything else.