So I’ve been working on this for close to two weeks now. It’s taken me awhile but I put the story all together into one post. While I do want to see what other stories are available I don’t have enough posts yet. Yes I could have made this several different posts but I don’t really enjoy it when other people take a long time so I decided to put this together because I don’t want to make others wait(No offense to anyone. I know it is hard and time consuming coming up with ideas and putting them together into a story. I thank you for the other stories you have put up). However I would appreciate it if you guys would comment on the story to give me an opportunity to gain more posts.
Samantha's a 17 year old girl. She is around 5 feet 6 inches tall. She has blond hair and blue eyes. She is very pretty and very popular in school. The only thing that takes away from her beauty is her teeth. Samantha has a large overbite and overjet. A couple of weeks ago she went to the dentist and it was suggested that she get braces. She went to the orthodontist Dr. Smith and he agreed. Impressions were taken, spacers were put in, and the date was set. Samantha was prepared for treatment. Although Samantha thought she was too old to be getting braces but her parents had insisted and she did have crooked teeth. Eventually she was on board.
The day finally came, and Samantha was really nervous. She sat in the office shivering at the thought of her treatment. Dr. Smith hadn’t told her the details yet. When Samantha sat down in the dentist chair, the assistant went right to work inserting a lip spreader into her mouth to keep her lips off her teeth. Next she took out the spacers using one of those little picks the dentist uses to scrape plaque off of teeth. She took some large metal bands and stuck them in Samantha’s mouth. She told Samantha to bite a stick to seat the bands. After doing this several times the assistant put cement on the bands and installed. The assistant used a black light to cure the cement. Then she got to work on all of Samantha other teeth. The assistant took out what looked like a big syringe filled with blue goo. Samantha thought that it was a shot and made a small noise. The assistant told her not to worry. She squirted the blue stuff onto Samantha’s teeth. It smelled horrible. The assistant said it was just a little acid to scratch the surface of her enamel to provide a better grip for the brackets.
The assistant then splashed some water around on Samantha’s tooth and dried it with some air. Then she pulled out some clear goo and using a small stick applied it to Samantha’s teeth. She started putting brackets on Samantha’s teeth and once she was done put a sheet over her mouth so the light wouldn’t cure the cement. After a little while Dr. Smith came over and checked everything out.
He went to work moving the brackets around and adding small hooks on some. These hooks were for the elastics she would later wear. Samantha felt the front of her teeth with her tongue and couldn’t believe how she was getting braces at age 17. Most of her friends had finished wearing their braces several years ago. Dr. Smith retrieved some wire to connect her braces together, and went right to work. He bent it around and inserted it into the brackets. Dr. Smith asked Samantha what color ligatures she wanted, and thinking for a second, she answered “I want pink.” When Dr. Smith was done he had Samantha look in a mirror to let her see what he had done. She was a little shocked, but realized her appearance hadn’t changed that much. Dr. Smith got a small bag of multi-colored elastics and showed them to Samantha . “You have to wear 2 of these every day, all day. If you don’t wear these every day I will have to use stricter appliances . I will show you how to attach them now.” He got out a chair-mounted mirror, and removed several of the elastics from the bag, along with a small tool for applying them. He hooked one elastic on her lateral incisor and stretched it to the corresponding tooth below. He did the same on the other side of her mouth. When Samantha tried opening her mouth, she felt as though there was something stretchy preventing her from opening her mouth very far. She could talk well enough, and Dr. Smith sent her home with some wax for soreness, feeling confident she would do great.
For the rest of the night, Samantha was in pain from her orthodontic work. She didn’t eat dinner, and only ate very soft foods the rest of the night. Worse, she had to go to school the next day, which she proclaimed was unfair. When she went to school, people noticed and commented nicely. Samantha continued to get used to the braces for the next 4 weeks, but she sometimes “forgot” her elastics.
4 weeks later Samantha went back to see Dr. Smith again. He went right to work removing the old ligatures from her braces, and removed the old archwires. This relieved some pressure on Samantha’s jaw, but it would soon return. Dr. Smith got a bit thicker wire this time, and worked it into Samantha’s brackets. This time Samantha chose orange.
As it turns out, the elastics were hard to keep up with. She had to change them every 4 hours, and doing this at school was a challenge. Every day at lunch, Samantha had to put up with the embarrassment of removing 4 elastics from her mouth, and then put the small multi-colored elastics on her tray. After lunch, she went to the restroom and refitted her elastics.
At her next appointment everything started out as usual. Dr. Smith began tightening her braces, and this time Samantha got green on top and purple on bottom. Reaching into a drawer behind him, Dr. Smith pulled out a mirror and a big metal wire thing. “This is called a facebow. It is a type of headgear for people with overbites” he said. After setting up the mirror for Samantha to watch his work, he inserted the facebow into the tubes on the bands of Samantha’s upper molars. Then he said “Since you must wear the headgear 24 hours a day it makes no sense to leave it up to you when to take it out. So what I’m afraid I’m going to have to do is wire your headgear in.” Samantha tried to protest but Dr. Smith would have none of it. Struggling Samantha started to sit up but Dr. Smith pushed her down. He called for assistance and one of his assistants walked over. The doctor explained the situation and the assistant walked away. Moments later she returned holding a phone. It was Samantha’s mother. She explained that the doctor had told her the situation and she agreed with him. Samantha had no choice but to comply.The assistant took the phone away and Dr. Smith started talking once more. He said “ I understand this is a big change for a girl your age. You’re social status is very important to you at this time in your life. However it is important that we fix your smile as soon as possible. If we wait to long your bones will become much harder to move without having you go through surgery. I’ve talked to your mother and she agrees with me that we have to do this. It will only be for a few weeks and we want to make them as short as possible.” His speech over Dr. Smith soon got to work. Reaching inside Samantha’s mouth with some small pliers he examined the very back molar bands that the facebow connects to. He took out some small wire and looped it over and under the wire of the facebow. Then he managed to tie the wire into a knot and snip off the small pieces of wire remaining. He reached over to the small tray beside him and pulled out a plastic package. He opened it up and showed Samantha what was inside. It was a big tangle of neon pink straps. “These connect to your facebow” he said. They will help us control the amount of force and direction we will apply to your mouth.” He connected the pink straps to the facebow on the hooks on the side. One set of straps went over her head and one sat by her neck. Samantha immediately felt tension on her upper jaw. The big metal wire poked out of Samantha’s mouth. Samantha had been crying for quite some time at this point but the doctor just ignored her. Samantha tried desperately to remove the headgear from her mouth but it didn’t budge.
When Samantha got home she immediately looked in the mirror. She had a metal bar sticking out of her mouth and bright neon straps that didn’t go with anything. Everyone is going to notice her she thought. How great. She couldn’t imagine what her friends would think of her now. They probably wouldn’t even want to be near her Samantha thought. Throughout the night Samantha kept tossing and turning. She couldn’t sleep because of the pain and because her big bulky head gear kept banging into her pillow. She had to sleep on her side the whole night. She managed to get through the next six weeks thought it costed her. She had no friends and everyone made fun of her. Even the other kids with braces in her.
At Samantha next appointment Dr. Smith looked at her and told her that she had two options. One she could keep the headgear for a couple more months or two he could install some less visible appliances for her instead. Samantha jumped at the opportunity and (obviously) took the second option. She told Dr black to go right ahead. Dr. Smith started by removing her wires and ligatures and putting in new thicker wires as usual. He then tied each bracket with wire ligatures. He grabbed two palate expanders from the tray beside him. Then he cemented one to the roof of her mouth and cemented the other to her lower jaw. By this time, Samantha was getting a little nervous and scared of what he was doing. The appliances seemed mouth filling and left no place for her tongue. Finally Dr. Smith installed a Herbst appliance one each side of Samantha’s mouth. The springs limited her from opening her mouth too far and allowed almost no side to side movement. When Dr. Smith was done he showed her his work. Samantha was shocked. “Dr. Smith , I can’t believe you did all of this to me! How could you?!!??” Samantha said distraught. Dr. Smith looked at her and said “I offered you a choice and you took it. Now let’s go over your appliances. The expanders are to widen your palate. Your jaw is too narrow and this was the only way we could fix it. Here is the expander key.” Dr. Smith pulled out a small pin attached to a plastic stick. Handing her a mirror he told her to open. He showed her the small hole in the expander. He inserted the pin into the hole and pushed towards the back of Samantha’s mouth. Almost immediately Samantha felt pressure in her mouth. She waited for the doctor to stop but he kept pushing. Samantha wanted to scream but the doctors hand was in her mouth. It felt like her mouth was being ripped apart. The doctor did the same the on the bottom of her mouth. “You have to turn both expanders three times a day” he said. “Now the herbst appliance is the alternative to your headgear. You will probably have them for a couple of years. Sometimes the arms get jammed or fall out of each other. It’s relatively easy to solve both problems. You can just push the arms back into each other and if the arms get jammed or squeaky just swish some vegetable oil around your mouth. Make sure you keep everything perfectly clean. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks!” With that, Samantha hopped out of the chair and made her way to the front. “Hi how can I help you?” The receptionist said. “I’d like to make an appointment for thix weekth.” Samantha said. “Oh my god. I HAVE A LITHP!!!! I can’t take it!!!” Samantha broke down into tears. After a while she finished up and walked out of the office. She finished her treatment three years later. She finally got the smile she had always wanted. However it had came at a great price. She had no friends throughout high school and was almost never invited to parties. Life was miserable for her. When she was finally done with her braces and appliances she had to wear a Hawley retainer fulltime for half a year. Even when she was done wearing her retainers fulltime she still wore them every night. She had no desire to repeat the process of getting braces.
THE END
