Background

When I was a kid and my permanent teeth started coming in, they were a mess - crooked and crowded with upper canines that came in above my other teeth (they looked like fangs). I wore braces for 3 years (complete with 2 different types of headgear and elastics) and was rewarded with beautiful, straight teeth....and an anterior open bite (my front teeth don't meet) caused by misaligned jaws. The braces could fix the teeth but not the bite/jaws. At the end of my teenage treatment, my orthodontist recommended jaw surgery to fix my bite/jaws, but at the time, surgery seemed like a very drastic thing to do to make what seemed like a cosmetic change. My parents and I declined. I wore removable retainers for a year and a half and then stopped wearing them (standard advice at the time). It wasn’t long before my teeth started shifting, and my bite opened up a bit more, but nothing looked so far out of whack that I was concerned. 


Fast forward 10 years....I went to a new dentist, and the first thing he recommends is jaw surgery to correct the open bite. He said that my molars were being subjected to abnormal forces and they might eventually start to fail. I was not interested in surgery. I was scared to death, thought it was cosmetic, and even if I wanted it, it wasn’t covered under my health insurance and I couldn’t afford it. "Might" eventually fail wasn't a good enough reason for me.


Fast forward 10 more years... As predicted, my molars began to fail one by one.Several upper molars/pre-molars needed repeated root canals, apicoectomies, and 2 eventually needed to be extracted because the roots were cracked. After the first extraction, I wanted to place an implant but again was told that I should pursue the surgery route, get my jaw fixed, and then place an implant. If I didn't fix the jaws, the implants would more than likely fail - they are less able to withstand abnormal forces than real teeth. I waffled around for 2 years until I lost my 2nd molar, and it became suddenly clear that if I didn't take action, I would lose all of my teeth.


My only real option at this point was to bite the bullet and get the surgery done. I’m too young to lose my teeth (mid-30’s), and I’m already embarrassed about missing 2 teeth, so I began consulting dentists, orthodontists and surgeons to get my team in place and get this show on the road. 


One of the unfortunate things that goes along with jaw surgery (as if that wasn't unpleasant enough) is braces. Train tracks. Metal mouth.  The teeth in each jaw have to be in perfect position before the surgery so that both jaws fit together perfectly after the surgery. My teeth had been shifting out of their formerly perfect condition for 25 years, so braces were required. 


My orthodontist noticed some gum recession on my lower incisors that could compromise my treatment, so I had gum/gingival grafing done on those teeth to build up and stabilize my gums before the braces were installed. They took tissue from my palate and stuffed it under my existing gum tissue, which sounds worse than it was.


Here's a picture of my teeth on day 1 of getting braces on. Note: I'm biting down with my back teeth: