JAW SURGERY - SEPTEMBER 23

Happy Spring!

This month I am celebrating my ONE YEAR BRACES ANNIVERSARY! Holy crap! I seriously cannot believe that it's been one entire year (as of April 21) that I've had these suckers on. Sometimes it feels like I've had them on my entire life and other times it feels like it's only been a few months!

So... on to the big news that's bringing in my one-year anniversary - my jaw surgery is officially booked for SEPTEMBER 23, 2010. That's only 144 days until my new and improved face is here!!! (that's actually a saying I've never understood - how can something be NEW and be IMPROVED? You can't improve something that is brand new...anyways... tangent).

I guess finally booking my surgery date is a good thing, but I am NOT happy that it's in fricken September...GRRRRRR. I am actually ready to go in for surgery as of MAY, but my Oral Surgeon does not have any surgery dates open before the September one. UUUGGGGGGHHHH. I don't know anything more annoying for one of the MOST IMPATIENT PEOPLE IN THIS UNIVERSE (moi). So, to make things a little bit better, I am on a waiting list to get an earlier surgery date (everyone cross their fingers for me that someone cancels and they can schedule me for June or July!!!).

To help myself vent, I've put together a list of pros and cons as to having the surgery in effin September. Here we go:

Pros:
- My face won't be messed up for my birthday in June
- My work will be very busy in June, so I won't feel like I'm leaving them hanging
- It's probably less hot in my apartment at the end of Sept than the summer
(I can seriously only think of 3)

Cons (here we go...):
- I have to wait 4 months in limbo. I asked my Ortho if he could do anything to better my teeth while waiting those 4 extra months and he didn't sound very convincing. He said something along the lines of "refining" my teeth...yeah ok. He's just trying to make me feel better. However, he did say that he would give my OS a call and see if he can work some magic to get me a closer date. 4 months in limbo also potentially means 4 extra months of braces at the end of it all.
- I am now on a waiting list which means that they could call me one week before an available surgery date and I would have to drop all my plans for the next month and ask my work to do me a huge favor and let me take 2-3 weeks off unplanned
- My best friend, who is in medical school, offered to come up and take care of me in June for a few weeks... and now she probably won't be able to (but there is a small chance she can come in Sept if I don't get a date closer)
- I have to keep all this cashmoney in my bank account for the surgery pre-assessment work that I CANNOT SPEND! Do you know how HARD that is?!!! haha
- As I mentioned before, I am very very very impatient and making me wait 4 extra months will probably make me anxious and over think everything. We shall see..
- Did I mention I hate WAITING??? uggghh.

OK that's enough of me being a Debbie Downer... I'm usually extremely optimistic about crappy situations... but sometimes venting for a few hours or a day can help a ton! (My bf already got an earful of it the day I had my surgery assessment - I felt for him).

So I'm looking out to you guys, my lovely fans, to give me some optimistic points to help me get through this long-ass wait.

On a side note - I learned that if you have to wear the white power chain across your front teeth, don't eat a large amount of curry/tomato paste... it will stain the white elastic a gross yellow color. So sexy.

Hopefully there will be some good news soon! I'll post as soon as I hear anything and about my adventures on getting ready for the surgery.

Alexis

P.s. I got those "buttons" off the insides of my upper right teeth! Wahoo!

BIG NEWS!!!

I know what your thinking... that's a pretty big post title to live up to, but I'm not kidding... I have HUGE NEWS!!!

So I went in for a normal adjustment today knowing that they were going to take progression models and photos... and came out learning that my jaw surgery is going to be scheduled for JUNE! OMFG! I'm freakin' out! haha.

A few months back my orthodontist told me that it was looking more like I would have the surgery in the late summer/early fall. At first that kind of bummed me out because I was expecting it to be in the early summer. I finally got used to it and then he drops this bomb on me. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! He said that they could even book the surgery for May, but because of work being super busy that month - it's not going to be possible.

So June is the month! June is also my BIRTHDAY month. Coincidence? Maybe. All I know is a new face is the ULTIMATE birthday present. The only date I requested NOT to have the surgery is on my actual birthday. I don't care of it's the day before or the day after... just not that day!

The exact date is not booked yet - I have an appointment with the surgeon at the end of March and that's when we'll decide what day works best. I've heard that the normal time for recovery (i.e. to be able to go back to work) is about 2-3 weeks depending on how fast I recover.

Another bombshell that was dropped on me today was that my orthodontist mentioned that I may have to have top jaw AND bottom jaw surgery! EEK! I was hoping that it's just the top jaw with a slight movement of my chin to better my profile. This will all be determined at the end of March. Before my meeting with the surgeon, my orthodontist and him are meeting and chatting about what needs to be done. If I hear anything back from them before my actual meeting, I'll make sure to keep you guys in the loop!

Some other good news comes from the news just mentioned - I asked my Ortho whether the 30 months for braces was set in stone and he said NO! He said depending on how well I recover from the surgery, it will be anytime BETWEEN 24 and 30 months! That means that I could be braces free for my 27th birthday. I won't get my hopes up...but that would top the new face as a birthday present. Perfect smile trumps new face (but only because I'll already have had the new face).

Here are the progression photos taken today @ Week 45 and compared to the original photos - before braces:




You think there is a HUGE change now...just wait till the post-op photos :)

Top Teeth:




Bottom Teeth:




For all of you post-op readers out there, I would love your advice on EVERYTHING that has to do with jaw surgery (i.e. food, pain, swelling, etc.)

Thanks for reading and I'll keep you up to date when I have more information!!!

Facebook Fan Page - Brooks' & Alexis' Tin Grin Adventures!

I would like to welcome my friend Brooks to the world of Tin Grins! Brooks just got his braces yesterday (Feb 19, 2010). He has to have braces on for about 30 months.



To celebrate his new brace-face, we've made a Facebook Fan Page to let our fans follow our journey to the perfect smile!

Become a fan of our page by clicking here!

January Picture Updates

Two posts in one week! I'm on a roll!

Here are the photos I promised of my braces update:




The saturation is weird on the new photo, so please ignore that! But otherwise I wanted to point out how much my bite has changed so far! My orthodontist has been widening my upper jaw and narrowing my lower jaw. You can see a huge difference in the way my back teeth meet one another. In the Week 4 photo my bottom teeth are actually slightly WIDER than the top! Craziness!

Here are the photos of the new buttons put on my inner top right molars, linking to my outer bottom right molars:



p.s. from now on all of my new photos will be in black and white, I feel like it looks less gross upclose that way! ;)

2010 - The Year of Change

Hello braces world!

I know I've been distant and a stranger over the past few months...but I promise it's not you... It's me... Can we still be friends?

I knew you'd say yes :)

So I have a lot to update you guys on! First of all, I would like to start off by wishing everyone a very happy and healthy new year! I hope your teeth are getting straighter by the day. For those of you who do not have braces (YET), I wish you the confidence to just go ahead and slap those puppies on! I'm telling you, it's worth the goofy smile and the visit to the orthodontist every 6 weeks. My teeth have amazed me thus far and I can't wait to see what exciting changes are to come in 2010.

In total, its been about 9 months (or 280 days to be exact) since I got my braces on. What a journey it's been! Here are a few progression photos since the last photo update I posted:








My orthodontist says that my teeth are moving very well and that next time I go in for my adjustment (mid-feb) that I'll have progression models taken. Progression models are exactly like the white molds they take in the beginning of the process, and now will be taken to see how much my teeth have improved. The main reason for doing this is to be able to update my oral surgeon on the progress. This will help inform the oral surgeon as to when I will be able to begin the jaw surgery prep (holy camoly!!). When I first started this blog it seemed like the surgery was such a long time away...but now it's this year! This is the year of change for me. By the end of 2010, I will have my oral surgery completed (fingers crossed) and be able to see what my bite (and my face, profile, etc.) will be like for REST OF MY LIFE! EEK!!! Very exciting times. I'm actually not nervous one bit, and people think I'm crazy for that. I would have the jaw surgery tmrw if I could! Just knock me out, take some of the bone out of my upper jaw, screw me back together, hop me up on some sweet sweet pain meds and let the healing process begin! Haha. That is a fantasy of mine, but it seems more likely that the surgery will be happening in the late summer or early fall.

At the beginning of this process, I promised myself that once I got the braces on, I was determined to become the healthiest (physically) that I was able to be (without obsessing). I set a goal of losing 30 lbs and gaining a lot of lean muscle and eating as healthy as I possibly could. My reasoning behind this is that I want to be incredibly healthy for the surgery so that I know I've done everything possible to ensure that the surgery is a success and that I heal as well and as fast as humanly possible. I took a stand (against myself) and began to take full responsibility for my health. With that said, 9 months later, I am 25 lbs lighter and healthier than I've ever been in my life. I know it's weird to say, but since I had the braces put on, I've changed most of my life - for the better - and I will continue to use this experience as much as I can to grow as a person (both mentally and physically). I intend to push myself to limits I never thought were even possible. That said, my final goal is to lose 5 more lbs before I go into surgery. The objective and outcome of that goal is to only have to take 2 weeks off from my job and have my face and body to return to normal ASAP. For those of you out there who have had jaw surgery, how long has it taken you to be able to go back to work? How long until you were not eating out a straw?

Now for some technical braces updates. As you can see in the pictures, I've had some fun additions to the braces family. Back in the fall they started using power chains on my teeth. Power chains are the elastics that are attached to one another and can be linked across multiple teeth. They have used these power chains to shift teeth and to close gaps (especially on my upper right teeth where I had some major gaps from tooth removals as a child). In addition to the power chains, brackets were put on to some of my inside teeth on the upper right. These brackets are tinier than normal, and I think they are called buttons? Can anyone confirm this? Here is a picture of them:

These buttons were put on because they are trying to fix my wonky bite (which is a constant process obviously). When I bit down, I tend to jut out my bottom teeth and shift the bottom jaw to the left side. I have no idea why it does that, but I've been seeing MAJOR improvements in my bite over the past few months...so something must be working! The buttons are there to attach an elastic (my first elastic experience!)to the inside of my two top mollars on the right side, to the outside of the two bottom mollars on the right side. Does that make sense? I will post a photo of my buttons and elastic on the next post.

Now let me tell you... so far I am NOT a fan of elastics. Anything that I have to remember to do on a daily basis (besides flossing and brushing) may not happen as often as it should. For the first 6 weeks that I got them on, I was pretty good and wearing them 24/7. The major problem I noticed was that in the middle of the night, I would chew the elastic apart and wake up with either a missing elastic (probably ate it - yum) or it would be stuck in my cheeks. This probably happened every other night. Another, slightly easier problem to fix, was that I was not able to eat with the elastics in - for reasons of not EATING the elastic itself. Pretty sure I ate the first elastic that the orthodontist put in my mouth. Haha. Of course. Thus I learned to take the elastic out before meals and replace it afterwards. Anyho... now that my teeth have shifted the intended way, my ortho said I only have to wear them for half of the day (either all night or all day). Thank goodness! Although, I am certainly aware that there are MANY more elastics in my future. FML.

On a side note, I've wanted to make a new video post lately - to show you my transformation - but my new laptop does not have a webcam. I'll try to get one up soon!

That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed reading all about braces today, and I look forward to hearing your comments and questions.

Alexis

p.s. if any of you are on twitter, you can find me @alexis_levenson

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I want to wish all of you a very happy Holiday season & New Year!

Thank you for taking this journey with me so far!

First holidays with the TIN-GRIN. I think they make the outfit ;)

Open Bite Surgery

I know it has been FOREVER since my last post, but I promise to be posting more frequently in the near future!!!

I just wanted to post a quick note about this AMAZING video I just found on youtube that is basically the EXACT surgery that I will be having. The difference before and after is incredible.