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

[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.

[kate_nepveu]

Ah, got it. Appreciate the clarification, all the more for not having been entitled to it.

(I was recommended for the cut-jaw-apart surgery by an orthodontist and then saw a specialist in orofacial pain management and didn't actually need surgery after all, which has left me with a rather hammer-nail skepticism to orthodontists. But my normal bite isn't the problem and wow, that just all sounds like it sucks, I'm sorry. Way worse than having my mouthguard regularly rebuilt from the ground up or replaced because I'm so hard on it.)

[sovay]

I was recommended for the cut-jaw-apart surgery by an orthodontist and then saw a specialist in orofacial pain management and didn't actually need surgery after all, which has left me with a rather hammer-nail skepticism to orthodontists.

Yeeeah. I can see how that would happen. Glad you got to skip the surgery!

But my normal bite isn't the problem and wow, that just all sounds like it sucks, I'm sorry.

I'm just hoping it works and does what it's supposed to. I really don't care if my teeth aren't flawlessly aligned and spotless, I just want not to be told that at their current rate of wear I'm looking at having all the front ones replaced.

(I was initially recommended a much shorter course of Invisalign just to straighten out the front teeth so that they'd clash less. By the time the molds were being sent off to the company, the estimate had been revised to include the fact that my molars are also at weird angles to one another, crowding and accelerating the problem. Basically, I thought my teeth were worn but sound; I've never had a cavity in my adult life. Apparently, no; they're really fucked up. That has also been upsetting. I spend a lot of time actively trying to persuade myself that my body is not disintegrating around me, reflecting the total deterioration of my mind, and I should give up on both of them. The new health problems of this winter haven't helped, and finding out I have a long-term issue with my teeth, really not.)

[kate_nepveu]

*wince* Terribly sorry to hear all of it. I hope things improve soon.