Two Thirty

I have new teeth!

Well, in 6-9 months I will.  This morning I missed, by 12 minutes and £60, a hygienist appointment.  An hour later, and much flossing and brushing beforehand, I re-arrived and had some apparently invisible braces fitted - they're like clear plastic trays but on certain teeth there are little tabs to hold them in place.

I began this process back in February, and have been paying a smarting £260 a month ever since.  I'm a mild bit embarrassed that I am paying so much for what is essentially a huge vanity;  my teeth are not hideous or dreadfully crooked, just imperfect.  Today was the day I had the actual braces fitted, after taking impressions, making moulds, viewing videos of how they will move the teeth into a straighter alignment and with the free tooth whitening service at the end, how bright they will be.  I say free but it's a £3k kind of free.

When I looked in the mirror at the dentist's, who were running late by at least half an hour, which I didn't bill them for, I was horrified and ashamed I'd even bothered to try to fix my passable and pretty inoffensive teeth.  The tabs stick out miles and I think I look like I've got chicken stuck in my teeth.  The front 4 top and bottom do not have tabs, but the canines do and I look like a vampire.

Rather too late I've been googling reviews of the company that promote these invisible braces and they are encouragingly impressive;  gaps disappear, overcrowded mouths look perfect and straight, people seem happy and more confident.

But my first impression was awful.  When you have a classic metal brace, at least people see it and know what it is - what you can see with my teeth are strange pointy white things that don't look bad enough to register as alien in anyone's brain, but instead as 'somethings not right there'.

H told me it looked like I had dirty teeth, so that's fantastic.  And I have 6-9 months of it.  The good thing is you can take the trays off if you want, and have to when you eat.  I had them fitted at 1pm.  From then I went out with H to the park and the zoo and at 5:30pm I had to take them off, they were killing me and giving me a headache.  I cooked and ate with H and brushed and flossed and put them back on at 630pm where they've been ever since.  So that's roughly 8 and a half hours so far (it's 1030pm now) - I have to wear each tray (which you clean with toothpaste and water three times a day) for 300 hours before starting a new tray, which are slightly tighter in order to move the teeth to the desired position.  I have 5 trays to get through before Christmas.  Yippee.

I think I can pretty much give up on dating;  while I can remove the trays, the tab things look even worse without them, so it doesn't make much of an improvement.

And I have to drink tea through a straw, red wine's out, smoking isn't encouraged and for the first few days of every new tray, I've been recommended to only eat soft foods because the teeth become sensitive.

One of the tabs has already come off.  I'm not particularly happy about these braces.