Chapter 5: The third day of college
After being done with other subjects that day, Elly walked over to Emily's classroom.
Elly knocked on the door but didn’t get an immediate response.
Instead, she saw Eva walking towards her and opening the door.
Eva said to Elly to go to Emily’s office and sit in the dental chair.
Again, Elly complied with that request.
As soon as Elly sat down, Emily came into her office.
“Ah, good, you’re here.”
“Now Elly, today I want to install everything.”
Elly hesitated for a moment but said 'okay', because she had to get everything anyway.
“Good, let's start then.”
Elly was lowered and a lip spreader was placed in her mouth.
“I’m going to start with removing all your spacers and go to the expanders next.”
After Emily removed the spacers, she showed the upper expander to Elly first.
It had 6 bands instead of the 2 or 4 banded version she had seen before.
“It has 6 bands because I won't be able to get a band between them,” Emily explained
Elly saw a bit of acrylic on it as well, but Emily didn’t explain about it, and she couldn’t ask with the lip spreader in.
Then she showed her the lower expander, this also had 6 bands and a piece of acrylic.
After Elly saw everything, Emily went about to test fit them and they fitted like a glove.
Meanwhile, Eva made the cement for the bands and filled the bands of the expanders after Emily removed them again.
“Eva, can you bring over the tray with the other bands, so we can continue after I put in the expanders.”
Eva did as she was asked.
After Emily was done with the expanders, she test fitted Elly's other bands and removed them and moved on to the next tooth while Eva filled them with cement. After she tested all the bands, Emily installed all of them.
When she was done, she put the chair up right and removed the lips spreader and gave Elly a cup of water to rinse her mouth.
Elly rinsed with water, her tongue hitting the expanders when she did and found she had a very full mouth already.
When Elly spit the water out, the lip spreader was replaced and the chair lowered again.
“I’m not done yet,” Emily said.
After that, Eva brought over the tray with the Herbst arms.
“Elly, these will go on both sides of your mouth to correct your overbite.”
After explaining to Elly, Emily went about installing the arms, and after that, the wire.
The bands where the Herbst arm connected to on the bottom had a hole for the wire so her whole mouth could be engaged by the wire. After her wire was in place, Emily put stainless steel ligatures on her rather bulky brackets.
“So, we’re done with installing your braces and appliances,” Emily said, while raising the chair.
“Now Elly, have a look at your mouth.”
Elly was shocked at the sight of her own teeth. The only part of her teeth that was showing was about 1 mm on the bottom of her top and she could only see the white top of her bottom front teeth.
She opened her mouth and could see the Herbst and her lower expander and the bulky brackets with a hook on each of them.
“Your expanders are the experimental type.”
Elly looked confused at that.
“Your expanders have a small battery that will last at least 10 years that turns your expander automatically every 2 days so you don’t have to do it yourself and you can’t forget it either. Here, let met activate them.”
Emily grabbed a tool with a hook and put it in a small hole in the acrylic just to the side of the expansion screw.
The moment Emily did, Elly heard a whir and the top expander did one turn. After that, Emily did the same with the bottom one. “Now both of your expanders are active they will do one turn again in 2 days, but it will be during the night, so you probably won't notice it till morning that there's a bit more pressure.
Eva showed Elly how she had to take care of her new braces and appliances.
After Eva was done, Emily told them they were finished for today and they both could go home.
Elly stood up from the dental chair and got her coat and bag and headed to the train station.
