The separators before the molar bands

In my last post, I put up some pictures of my BEFORE shots before i started of with the 3 years long procedure to take care of my dental displacement. Here starts the first step.

Step 1: put separators on the two sides of my molars.

As the name 'SEPARATORS' suggests, they will basically be kept in my teeth for few days so that a separation is produced between my molar teeth and the surrounding teeth. After developing the required space around my molars, the separators would be taken off and molar bands would be put into place [check my next blog post for molar bands].

The molar bands are metallic and they are a bit thick. For these molar bands to fit around the molar teeth, some separation between the molar and the surrounding teeth are required.

After putting on the separators (small green rings), my teeth looked like this:

Disclaimer: If anyone is disgusted by these pictures, please press Ctrl+W (or Command+W on Mac)

They might look like small discs which can be slipped into the gap between the teeth. But no my friend. My dentist used some heavy clippers like tool to push these discs into the gap and it was not painless.

Agenda of my Dental Makeover

Following from my previous post on "I still got a baby tooth" my dentist explained to me what I need to get done. You guessed it. I have to put on braces at this age. I might get to hear a lot of " BraceFace! BraceFace!" in the coming 2-3 years.

So, my dentist explained to me she would have to pull off my overstaying baby tooth from the upper jaw. Then put on the braces which will clamp on to the permanent tooth sitting quietly inside and then pull that tooth down. That is the most time consuming part of this 3 year long agenda.

However, not just to settle the fight between my baby tooth vs. permanent tooth, i also wanted to take care of the alignment of my teeth which were altogether VERY MUCH out of alignment. And taking care of those, would also require pulling off 2 more tooth from my lower jaw. :S :S :S

The dentist said, during this process, I would need to take EXTRA care of my teeth, food remains, cavity etc. while I got the braces on. She said I might have to brush 6 times a day.

"WHOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAA??????!!!!!!!"