Introduction Post/Overview of my Teeth-Aligning History

Hello Blogspot! =] As is customary for most people's first journal entries, I'm going to talk a little bit about myself as a person. My name is Andrea Drac and I'm 19 years old; 20 in August. I'm going into my second year of college and am studying to be a journalist. Reading and writing stories has been a passion of mine since the age of three. My other favorite pastimes include playing video games (I'm currently going up the ranks in Wii Fit!) and going online. Besides Facebook and Myspace, I'm a member of five forums (The Hidden Bookcase, BSC Boards, In the Spotlight, Sitcoms Online and FanForum) and have a Livejournal account. My favorite TV shows are I Love Lucy, The Facts of Life, Different Strokes, 7th Heaven, Little People Big World and Gossip Girl (Major Jenny/Nate shipper) and I love country and 80s music. I'm also a proud Sweet Valley and Baby-Sitters Club fan =].

Do you have a need to know more about me? Well if you do then too bad because this journal is not going to be about my incessant fangirl ramblings, various book/TV episode recaps and goal lists. I created this blogspot account for one reason and that is to document my journey through braces, which I received on Tuesday June 23rd 2009 at approximately 2:45 pm. My orthodontist, for anyone who's interested, is Dr. Dino Mantis of Mantis Dentistry in Calumet City. At first, I will be updating this blog daily with all the little different quirks I discover with my braces and then once they become "old hat", I will be updating only weekly (every Tuesday night) and after every appointment until the very end of my treatment. The one thing that I can't provide for this blog (yet, anyway) is pictures because I don't have a camera. I mean, I do, but it's a family digital camera and I don't think pictures of my teeth need to show up between birthday party pics or something lol. Maybe later on when I buy my own camera I'll be able to post pictures but for now anyone who's reading this will have to use their imaginations to see how far along I am lol. I'm fine with not posting pics anyway because I'm not totally in love with how my teeth look atm.

Anyway, a little overview of my history with crooked teeth/teeth straightening: I first started out with Invisalign back in November 2004, when I was a freshman in high school (still under the care of Dino Mantis; we went to him because he was the only one near our area who "specialized" in Invisalign). We also tried the traditional orthodontist route (Dino has an actual dentist office all his own; not like most ortho places where it's like the beauty parlor with the chairs and orthos lined up lmao) but ended up opting out because I was told for some odd reason that I swallowed wrong and had some weird condition called "orange peel" or something hahahaha. Thankfully, I was considered a candidate for Invisalign, which surprised me and my mom because my teeth (btw I was 15 when this all started, actually 14 going on 15 in the beginning) were extremely overcrowded and we weren't sure if plastic could actually work on my teeth but Dino assured us that it would work and showed us different computer models that showed what my teeth would look like when the process was done, an estimated 18 months (I'm not the brightest math wizard but I know now it's been beyond 18 months lmao).

And things went well in the beginning; the teeth were moving. However, it took way beyond 18 months due to certain detours such as slow-moving teeth, causing the trays to lag behind, laser gum removal and having to modify trays (i.e. start the process over) twice. One of the last straws with Invisalign happened on what should have been my last appointment day before going to get the "dots" (attachments) off of my trouble teeth (the ones that needed to be pulled down and focused on more when the trays shifted the teeth) and starting retainer fittings; April 14th 2008 (by this time I was a senior about to graduate from high school). My teeth really didn't look terrible; imo when you look back at the way they looked before invisalign, it was a major, major improvement. My bottom teeth were completely straight and the right (my right, your left) side of my top teeth were only a little bit "gappy" because it needed the last tray to fill in the last gaps. However, the left (your right) side of my top teeth was where the problem was. My left cainine (I call it a fang or shark tooth haha) had somehow stopped moving during the process and would not grow down anymore to make it even with the other teeth on that side, which were pretty straight. So basically, when I would put a front tray on, every tooth would be filled in and fitted except for that one shark tooth, where it left this big, ugly, plastic gap that was especially noticeable anytime I rinsed the tray out before eating or brushing (gross as it was I would rinse or brush the tray around that one spot so it would look filled in when putting it on). Dino explained this to me as if I didn't already know and suggested that we go ahead and put "brackets" (aka braces) on my top teeth only and free of charge, since according to him Invisalign failed for me. As if this wasn't bad enough, I had to sit in the chair while he lectured me about how this should have been done a year and a half ago and about what a big gap I had with that tooth =[. Worse yet, this was a 4:30 appointment and my mom wouldn't be picking me up for another hour because she got off at 5:00 so I had to tell her this on the phone while I sobbed about having to wear braces for graduation. Thankfully, after mom talked to Dino, she got him to agree having to put the braces on after graduation, during the summer, when I could get better used to them. At that time, estimated treatment time was four months.

However, Summer 2008 came and went and we ended up not doing a thing with going further into braces. With graduation, my cousin's wedding, and getting ready for college at PUC on my plate that summer, we were all busy and it wasn't until March 17th 2009, during my spring break, that we even went back to Dino to talk about the next steps for treatment. Now Dino had changed his tune slightly and said that estimated treatment time was now six months and would have to wear top and bottom brackets, even though my bottoms were straight, because I would need to wear rubber bands to correct my overbite (which I swear to this day came from Invisalign lol). We made plans to start the process in May, at the start of my summer vacation, but since braces day was the day after Memorial Day, Mom and I got Dino to switch it to June so that I could do spacers on June 16th 2009 at 3:30 pm and the teeth cleaning/braces on June 23rd 2009 at 1:00 pm (Mom was taking a half day of work that day).

And now I'm going to begin documenting! =] My first post will be about my spacers, even though that happened last week, because as I stated, I want a full documentation of my braces journey. I'm sorry if you all got bored with this entry; I do tend to go on a lot, even about nothing, but this was really cleansing for me to write. I will try to write more short entries in the future =].