Heavy Metal v. I’m With The Band

You know when you eat popcorn and a miserable little piece of kernel gets lodged between your teeth up under your gums and you vow you’d give up popcorn forever just to get the bit out and feel some relief; and you attack it with toothpicks/fingernails/floss ignoring the discomfort because you know once its out things will start to feel better? Metal molar bands feel kinda like that, except without the relief at the end because the effers are permanent (well, until the orthodontist removes them at the end of treatment). Constantly feeling like you need to floss to get something bad out from between my teeth has got to be some form of torture. Unscrupulous folks out to get their pound of flesh could save themselves a lot of misery chasing people with knives (or whatever it is they do) and just jam stuff between the teeth of those they are out to get redemption from. I’m glad I have a devious mind! Ha ha!

Molar band... torturous thing

But yeah…metal molar bands, they hurt. More accurately, they hurt like hell. It feels like there are little teeny razor blades nested firmly against my gums.

And why do I have them you ask? Well as it has been explained to me, they are to create a stable anchor point for the surgeon when my jaws are in pieces… a solid brace point if you will. *shudder*

Oh come on, you know reading this, you want to trade places with me. Everyone must want this sort of oral nightmare! I’ve never hated going to the dentist (correction: having a root canal through a front-tooth crown was nerve wracking enough to have Ativan prescribed) but this sort of tooth manipulation/movement in my adult mouth is totally un-fun. I stopped growing years ago. These chompers I’ve got have been happily in place since I was a teenager. The pressure from moving teeth in my mouth is causing some epic headaches and these molar bands are the current bane of my existence. Melodramatic? Yeah, probably. But this is my blog and I’ll whinge if I want to! I just keep telling myself it will all be worth it in the end!