The Night Before Braces...

I am finally getting my braces tomorrow! I am feeling excited and quite nervous too. I wanted to post some final 'before' photos but very annoyingly my best camera seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth so the new photos I have taken are not very good. My old camera takes AA batteries and has a screen barely larger than a postage stamp. Old but faithful! Anyway, here they are. The rest are old photos I dug up on my computer.

 

 

In those pictures, I am wearing the very stylish and comfortable cheek retractor which I bought, not that I am taking this too seriously or anything. Since I can barely floss my teeth without braces, I figured I might need it so I can have both hands free. I'm not sure yet how useful it will be for flossing but it does give you a great view of your whole mouth. There weren't any pictures or instructions included but it only took 20 minutes of gagging and spluttering in front of the mirror while turning it round and round (one side is bigger than the other) to get it right! To confirm my tendency to overthink and overprepare for everything, I have actually got myself a little dental kit together.

 

In here there are orthodontic toothbrushes, space invaders and an interdental brush with extra heads, although they appear to be the same thing, the space invaders in mini sizes, a single use toothbrush treated with powder that turns into toothpaste when wet in case I get stranded somewhere, a little case of wax, a mirror, the cheek retractor and orthodontic floss with a hard wire on the end for threading that I will hopefully manage better than regular floss.

The clear tube thing on the right is a 'lip bumper' I can trim down and fit over the brackets. I got it because I get mouth ulcers often but might only wear it at night, depending on how much it affects my speech. And I don't think you can eat with it. I thought to start with I would get a bit of everything to try. I'm not sure what I will order again. And it all fits in a clear plastic case.

A couple more pictures I already had on my computer. It's slowly sinking in that this is happening and for some reason, I can't stop running my tongue over my teeth while there's still no brackets.