My quick straight teeth diary

On the plus side, the headlines are: MY TEETH HAVE MOVED. The lower ones are now even, although not yet where they should be. Obviously, or it wouldn’t take 180 days.

On the other hand, Friday was the first tightening day. On that subject I will say this:

Aaarghargharghaarrrrrrrghfuckingarrrgh!!!

To make room for all this dental rearrangement, I was given a choice between removing one of my lower front teeth, which was misaligned, or simply shaving little bits off all of them. ‘Remove a tooth?’ I thought. ‘That sounds painful and drastic!’ So I agreed to let him shave my teeth. SHAVE MY TEETH. Yes, kids, that’s as ludicrously painful as it sounds. He used little metallic sandpapery strips and an electric spinning disc. I imagine this is how governments with unsound human rights policies get political prisoners to give up their souls.

Added to that, the braces are still tearing my mouth apart. I made the mistake of trying to eat two proper meals in a day. I chose carefully, sweet potato fries (squishy) with veg chilli and cheese on top (also squishy), and later some Chinese soft chicken and tofu. Even these soft things needed chewing a bit. Mouth movement. Inner lip tearing. Argh.

I could go on at length on the wax vs gel question (the two things they offer to put over the sharp bits) but basically the gel is better for eating but dries visibly white and looks ridiculous. The wax falls off when eating but is more subtle looks-wise.

It seems that in the 9 days I’ve been wearing these troublesome mouth bastards I’ve lost a good few pounds. I’ll be weighing myself later on today when I finally drag myself to the gym, but the clothes I was pretending to have forgotten because they mysteriously didn’t have enough arse-room any more have bounded joyfully back into my life. My stomach is flat. Nice. On the other hand, I’m female and 34, so now my tits look rubbish and my face looks older. They say that once you get out of your twenties it’s a straight choice between your face and your figure, and I seem to have chosen six months of figure. BYE, FACE.

Eating is possible, and I’m still doing it, but the thought of getting gooey stuff stuck around the thing on my teeth and then having to clean it all off is just repulsive. That leaves out bread, pretty much. Life is too short for attempting to chew meat or anything crunchy on the two tiny bite points I’ve been left with. Things with bits in are a NO. So, we’re all about soup, into which can be melted cheese and crackers to form beige mush. Or stew, or soft pasta. Smooshed spinach with everything, to ensure I don’t die of scurvy. Smoothies and Ready Brek are actually quite nice breakfasts. The one piece of properly good news is frozen yogurt with occasional marshmallows. Things that hold their shape but are still mushy (pasta shapes, marshmallows, beans) are easiest to eat.

They give you wax to put around the sharp bits and if I don’t use it then my mouth is torn to shreds, which is at best distracting and at worst is a shredded mouth horror scene of total doom. It’s almost tempting not to eat so that the wax doesn’t move. I think I’ve eaten quite a lot of it by now. The actual teeth themselves don’t hurt that much - the odd one here and there will have a few moments or I’ll get a headache, usually in the evening, but the problems of eating and speaking and smiling are still the worst.

Happy New Year! 2014, year of the teeth. Well, mine, at least. Today I went and got braces fitted. Not remotely extraordinary to any of millions of teenagers the world over, but despite the lingering over-fondness for cider and eyeliner, I’m not a teenager.

When I was a kid I had a dentist who did things like removing both of my second-to-front teeth (adult ones) and letting the canines move forward, just to keep things straight. I can remember his little chuckle of glee at his own genius, as he explained. His injections were like, well, great big needles tearing into my young mouth, and the time he tried to remove my final baby tooth, I leapt out of the chair and hid behind my mother. That baby tooth didn’t come out until I was 31. If I saw him now, I’d bite him.

So there’s me, 31 years old, with a brand new young dentist looking with astonishment at my mis-managed mouth. He suggested I get braces. I laughed. Braces, at 31? Wouldn’t they look horrible? And HOW much?? So, like any sensible person, I didn’t.

Skip forward *cough* (a few) years and here I am again. My young dentist’s wife is about to have their first baby. He’s still amazed by my missing second teeth. And it’s all still annoyingly crooked. By a strange coincidence I have both an uncharacteristic openness to looking less attractive for six months, and, if not quite spare money, the ability to convince myself I can afford it, as long as I don’t think too hard about what else my crooked teeth could be doing if I wasn’t doing this.