Part 9
As Jess is going to tell a story by herself, I decided to leave the lisp for this part. I bet you can imagine how she sounded
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“Well, I had braces when I was younger, when all my friends had braces as well, However my mom didn’t like braces at all. It was that my dentist explicitly mentioned that if my deep bite wasn’t corrected, it would cause problems when I was older.
I was taken to an orthodontist and after all the examinations, moulds, X-rays and so on, we were taken into his office to discuss the treatment plan. My treatment would contain braces on my top and bottom jaw, a bite plate behind my front teeth and several elastics.
As my mother really disliked the idea that her daughter was fitted with those ugly metal braces, she decided that I should get the clear brackets. The orthodontist wasn’t too enthusiastic, because he thought those brackets shouldn’t be strong enough for the movement that he needed, but he agreed and said that he would at least give it a try. At that moment I didn’t really care, but I felt sorry that I didn’t get the same as my friends.
I was allowed to choose a color for the biteplate and my mother agreed with blue, because she thought nobody could see it as it was supposed to be behind my front teeth. Before I left the office I got some spacers around my top molars.
After about a week I was fitted with braces and when I was allowed to rinse my mouth after gluing the brackets in place, I had a quick peek in the mirror. I didn’t like what I saw. They looked like big chunks on my teeth, making my lips to stand out. It looked much worse than what I had seen with my friends.
Back in the chair they fitted the biteplate. It was fixed in my mouth with some molar bands. When I closed my mouth, my bottom teeth hit the plastic and my molars didn’t touch anymore. I felt around with my tongue and I really liked the feeling of the smooth plastic.
Next they gave me a mirror, so I could see the end result and to see how to connect the elastics. The biteplate wasn’t completely behind my front teeth, but showed about 1 or 2 millimeters below them. Because of the extra height and the massive brackets, it was hard to close my lips, making the blue plastic of the biteplate visible at all times. I liked what I saw, but at the same moment I was worried about the reaction of my mother. I was sure, she wouldn’t like it at all.
You can imagine that the bite plate gave me a lisp, but it wasn’t as bad as with the tonguecrib I have now.
As expected my mother didn’t like the image of my braces, but she lived with it. I really liked the biteplate and the challenge it gave me with talking and eating. I guess my mom was more embarrassed by my braces than I was and she really felt sorry for the obvious biteplate, that I just liked. But the more I liked my biteplate, the more I hated the clear brackets. They were bulky and sharp and in my opinion, they caused my lips to act unnatural, drawing even more attention to them then metal braces. On top of that, no one my age had clear braces.
It was after a month or so when I had my first check up. The orthodontist mumbled something about less progress than he expected and again mention that the clear brackets might not be suitable for my case.
Back home I started searching the internet about clear brackets and soon I found cases where the clear braces weren’t strong enough and broke because of the pressure. In most of the cases, the braces were replaced with metal braces. I took a good look at my braces and saw that the wire was bent quit strong to follow the position of the brackets and my teeth.
Because of the image of that heavy bent wire, I understood why the orthodontist was worried about the strength of the brackets. Before I really realized what I was doing, I took a scissor from my make-up-table and put it into the slot of a bracket. A very gentle twist caused one of the stuts on the bracket to brake, just at the point where the wire was pushing on the bracket.
First I shocked what I saw, but I quickly realized that I just found a way to get rid of the clear brackets. I took the scissors again and modified another bracket at the other side of my mouth.
I took the small bits that had come of and went to my mom. She was shocked and immediately called the orthodontist for an emergency appointment.
They replaced the broken brackets, but he also warned me and my mom that as more brackets would break, we might have to consider metal brackets. It took me a few months with modifying my brackets. Sometimes the same brackets, sometimes other locations and not to much at one time. Then after about three months, when again I had two broken brackets, he called my mom to discuss metal brackets. My mom knew she had no choice but to agree in the use of metal brackets. In the same appointment my clear brackets were taken off and I got some nice small metal brackets. I kinda flew out of the office. I was so happy that I now had the same kind of braces as my friends and the were so much more comfortable than the bulky clear ones. I could even better close my lips around them.”
“Wow, so you sabotaged your discrete braces to get braces that stood out much more,” I said: “Did you ever told your mom what you did?”
"No, I didn’t.” Jess said: “Actually you are the first I’ve ever told.”
