Okay, so it was not a pleasant experience. But I'm glad it's over. The first thing they did was take out the wire on the top with the coils in the gap and took off the O-rings and power chain. They changed the powerchain on the bottom. They used some kind of tool and put pressure on the band that was wrapped around my upper tooth holding one side of the expander. She goes "ok on 3. One....two...three!" and yanked. Yawwwooooowwwwwwwwww. Ow, ow, ow, pain shot from the upper left side of my mouth to the upper right side. I told them I needed a few minutes. I sat there for almost 5 minutes, waiting for the pain to subside. She said, "the other side will be easy. It's already undone on this side and it probably won't hurt now." Finally, I said ok. She yanked the other side and it was out. It didn't hurt the second time. Sooooo glad to have that thing gone. I had completely bent the tongue guard on one side from pushing on it with my tongue and it was uncomfortable as I would get mouth sores and no way to reach them because the guard was in the way. Then they added another bracket on each side where the band used to be that held the expander. Once that was done, they put new wire and new coils in place on the top row and put new O-rings. The last step was checking my bite. I no longer needed the bite blocks in the back so she chiseled those down and removed them. She added new bite blocks right behind my two front teeth so my front teeth don't hit the brackets on the bottom when I bite down.
When they were all done, she gave me rubber bands and said I need to wear them to bring the back teeth into place. So I need to change out the rubber bands 4x a day. I'm supposed to take them off when I eat and wear them the rest of the time. Oh joy.
Glad this day is over. Attached is a photo of my bring-home souvenir. Next appointment is in 6 weeks.
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