Gimmie space, oh baby gimmie space!

I am fighting a cold, but I am not winning. I am chock-full of Advil Cold & Sinus as well as some daytime cold relief capsules we had in the bathroom  this morning. I am counting the hours/minutes/seconds until I can go home and curl up on the couch with my dog and a blanket and a cup of Neo-citran because I somehow felt I had to drag my butt into work today. Silly girl.

So in addition to feeling miserable with a faucet for a nose, I had an appointment at the orthodontist to have spacers put on either side of my 2nd to last back molars on the bottom. Spacers look like tiny rubber washers that are stretched and then “flossed” between my teeth. Yeah… they were a pretty damn tight squeeze to get them in. Now they are in place and I can actually “bite” on the tops of the spacers. It’s a weird sensation… kind of like when you’re blowing up balloons and you chomp down on the rolled open end. Anyhow, aside from that annoyance, since they are pushing against the teeth next to them I have intense pressure in my mouth. This of course complements the sinus pressure in my head.



Bad cell phone pic of the blue spacers


The purpose of the rubber spacers is to push my other teeth away from the "naked" tooth to make room so that a week from today when I go back in, the metal molar bands being put on the aforementioned molars will *hopefully* go into place with relative ease. However I am bracing myself for the possibility that it will suck. And I suspect rightfully so, because to quote my orthodontist, “next week, be prepared for about 45 minutes of tugging and wrestling in your mouth”. Oh golly, I can hardly wait. Then in October I get to have the same thing done to the top teeth.

But for now, it feels like I have steak stuck in-between my teeth and there is nothing I can do about it. I am under strict instructions to NOT floss between the teeth the spacers are on. Blarg. I was sent away with 4 spare spacers and instructions on how to put them in place in case I lose one. Considering how difficult they were to get in place at the ortho’s office, I am not banking on them “falling” out. At least I hope not! Either way, I have a week with them in!