- I'm 23
- I've always had crooked teeth and an open bite for as long as could remember
- The only time I've been to a dentist in my life was last year when I had my wisdom teeth removed
- My parents never had dental insurance, and could never afford to take their children to see the dentist
So, I've started on my course of treatment to having a nice smile and full functionality of my teeth. This blog will document that process. I'll show tons of pictures and talk about everything in the process, including costs of treatments and surgery to how much pain I'm in. I want this to be a help to everyone else who might have to go through something like this, or just to people who enjoy seeing something progress through time. In writing, I'm also hoping it will help pass the time. I'm sure it's going to be a loooooong road ahead, but before I know it, I'll have a nice smile and be looking back and reading these first posts and thinking "I'm glad I'm not there again"
Deciding to get braces
I think it was around October of 07 when I said to myself, "Why don't you go get braces?" In my oral ignorance, I just assumed, I'll get some metal put in my mouth, a year or two later, I'll have straight teeth and can bite the lettuce out of a sandwich. It turns out, it's a little more complicated than that; at least for me. I saw an orthodontist that same month. They took molds of my teeth and some x-rays. I came back later that month to talk about my options. He basically said that I'd have to get two surgeries, along with braces to have the desired smile I was looking for. The first surgery, which I later found out is called a Surgically Assisted Rapid Palette Expansion (SARPE) will break my top jaw somehow in the middle, and a palette expander will be put in to gradually push the two halves outward. This is going to leave a large gap in my front teeth, which will then be pulled straight with braces. I'll also get braces on my bottom teeth. Once the braces do their magic and straighten my teeth, I'll get a second surgery. This surgery will involve completely separating my top jaw from my skull, cutting some bone off the back, putting it back in place, then screwing it down. That's the surgery to fix my open bite.
The orthodontist said the braces alone would be around $5,000. Unfortunately, my dental insurance doesn't cover braces, but, there is some part about if the orthodontist is in the network, there are some discounts. I got some paperwork saying that my insurance would cover about $1,780 of that final cost. This was a pretty big relief, because I didn't even want to think of how much all that surgery would cost.
He also told me to make an appointment to see an oral surgeon, which I did. I was able to talk to him on December 3rd. The oral surgeon just went over the process of how the surgeries would go, some time-frames and things... it's always hard to listen and remember when anyone in a white coat is saying stuff to you. I just nod and think, "I hope this is all in the paperwork I get before I leave..."
The orthodontist and the oral surgeon keep in touch with each other about my 'case', I guess, and tell each other what they want to do and when. So my orthodontist calls me and tells me that it's more work than previously thought, so he said my dental insurance isn't covering any of the braces. I guess he either felt bad or was afraid of losing my business, because he knocked off around $780 of the final price for changing his initial quote. So, in all my braces are going to be about $4,220. I can get the final exact prices later. Right now, I'm just waiting on my medical insurance to tell me how much of my surgery they are going to cover, which is going to take about a month. I don't want to start my braces without first knowing how much the surgeries are.
I'll get some pictures up when I can. I plan on staying anonymous, with just pictures of my teeth and jaw. I also plan to make before and after animations to show the progress. Until then, wish me luck.
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