I’ff got sthuff in a-tween mah teef 'n ah dun like it a bit!
Pleass to not make me tawk tooday.
owchityowowow.
For those of you that like to play along at home, grab a couple paperclips and shove them between your molars! Hours of fun!
Those spacers hurt like a motherfucker, pardon my french. I’ve had braces on for a year and a half now, and the spacers were definitely the most painful part so far. Although I must say that the routine adjustments are becoming more and more painful as treatment progresses. I’m not really sure why.
Anyway, I feel your pain. Literally.
Ahhh…spacers. I know your pain, I had them in for about 2 weeks, and braces for 3 years. Try to stay away from sticky foods, and from playing with them. In the mean time, feel free to eat lots of cold foods. Just think of your perfect teeth you will soon have…
Owies. I hope you don’t have to put up with that for 10 days as suggested in the link.
Enlighten me, please. How the heck does the orthodontist wedge the spacers between your teeth if your teeth are wedged so tightly that you can’t get stuff between them? Does it involve pliers?
Here’s hoping that the spacers work their magic quickly!
sheesh, wimps.
I had braces in the early 70s. Yup, they jammed metal bands on all my teeth in one sitting. Think about your little spacers between a few molars and multiply it.
You know how they got the bands on? The smeared the interior with some light babyshit brown goo, centered it over the tooth and used a spring driven device to thunk the band onto your tooth, with a piece of wood[?] padding the tooth and providing a flat surface to drive the band on evenly. Then they ran wires around the outside face of the teeth and wired those to the bands. Every month I would go in and they would play with the bands and wires. I got lucky, they had to pull 4 teeth from my brother before doing his braces. Then they had a spreader inside the roof of his mouth driving the sides of his jaw apart [too narrow] I was lucky enough just to have crooked teeth!
It’s been a few years now (about 18) but I can still fondly remember elastics…at one point I had 4 different sizes in my mouth at the same time, and not symmetrically placed. I had a full page diagram and it took me about 10 minutes each morning to put them in. If I yawned I could put somebody’s eye out with the projectile…
In my case, my teeth were way too close together for rubber spacers. (My jaw was simply too small for the size of my teeth.)
They ended up using the metal spacers they had sideways (to get the smallest width), then when the teeth finally moved enough for those to slide out they turned them the proper way.
Even with all that work (which included removing four teeth and my four widsom teeth) my teeth are still so close together that dental floss has a tendency to shred between my teeth. (Even that new ‘glide’ stuff, but at least that stuff doesn’t shred as badly.)
Time to stock up on baby food XJETGIRLX! (The fruit ones aren’t all that bad actually. Stick 'em in the fridge, and they will feel wonderful on your teeth!)
<< What part of MEOW didn’t you understand? >>
10 days for spacers?! I was 12 (in 1977) when I had my teeth repaired – they did the spacers between all of my teeth one day, and jammed on the brace (top and bottom) the next!
Fun fact #1: about 3 years after I had the brace removed, I felt something weird catching on the floss between my molar – it was a spacer that had got stuck there all that time.
Fun fact #2: a few years ago, my new dentist asked me, how long ago did I have braces. At that point, it was about 25 years. He asked, ‘Did you know you still have the cement from the bands on a couple of your teeth?’ :eek:
My orthodonist was an utter sadist (he’d threaten the kiddies with jabs if they cried) – he couldn’t keep assistants because they couldn’t stand how mean he was to the little ones. Eventually one of them grew up and managed to get the guy investigated, and he was no longer allowed to practice.
But quite honestly – friends now whose children (and some of them themselves) going through repair say it hardly hurts at all anymore, so no worries!
Good luck with your repairs, and the results will be worth the discomfort! 
Well, to the best of my understanding (as I wasn’t able to get a good view at the time) they sort of threaded the spacers onto some floss and managed with brute force to floss them into place. Not fun.
Ah, yes, elastics. I’ve actually had my braces on for a year now, only just now getting brackets in the way way back as my elastics were not performing in the manner they’d hoped. I’ve had rubber bands running six ways from sunday all across my mouth. Thankfully I’m down to just one now.
I’ve got a week in spacers before they pop the bands on. Fun!
Ai yi yi! I’ve seen pictures of braces from back in the day. Thank heavens for technology! Did you know that the archwires they use now are made by NASA? And that they’re a temperature-sensitive memory metal? When the wire is cold it’s as pliable as a piece of cooked spaghetti. Once it heats up to body temp though it stiffens back up into an arch. No more crimping and twisting the wire to adjust, just change out the archwires every so often. It’s really fantastic!
I’m scheduled to go in for some “slenderizing” which SUCKS ASS. The closer I get to being finished all this work, the more I dread going in there.
I had the spacers and brackets, didn’t need the arch thingy and as soon as possible switched over to the invisaligns. Man, these babies are worth every extra penny.
Ahh, thanks for reminding me, I should start wearing my retainers again. It’s been… four years, I think, since I got my braces off? And my teeth will still shift if I don’t wear my retainers for a while. Stupid teeth.
That looks outrageously painful.
I guess one of the advantages of being British is that i’m allowed to have crooked teeth 