Tuesday, May 10, 2011

New mouth impressions, adjusting the Do Not Adjust appliance

10/20/11 I have just made a correction to my January 30, 2011 blog entry. The appliance is NOT called "Do Not Adjust". It is supposed to be called "Daytime-Nighttime Appliance™"

Monday they took a new set of upper & lower impressions plus a new impression of the bite registration so that the lab can make an appliance for my lower teeth. The new appliance ought to be ready in about 10 days.

The dentist spent some time bending the springs at the front of the appliance, as well as the wire that arches across in front of all the teeth. She also removed one spring- the one that relates to my farthest-forward canine tooth- because we don't want it to come any farther forward. In addition the arch wire now touches that tooth, to prevent it from moving farther forward. All that was done to assist getting my front teeth in line.

I am still to expand the anterior portion of the appliance on schedule, while leaving the lateral adjustment alone. The gap for the anterior plate is now visibly wider than the gap for the lateral plates.


 You can also see where one of the springs has been removed. There is a whitish area there now because in order to remove the spring, the dentist removed some of the acrylic it was anchored into. Then she mixed some new acrylic to re-fill the gap she created. Her repair acrylic was white.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Clarifications, Progress, and a New Phase

Clarifications: As it turns out, I indeed had a wrong impression in the previous blog entry (April 18 2011). We are not permanently finished expanding the appliance laterally. It is only a temporary halting. Her explanation of pleasant surprise was genuine, however. She said I have made unusually fast progress. The temporary halting of lateral expansion has been ordered so that we can allow other growth areas to 'catch up' with the lateral growth that has occurred.

Something else that can use some clarification: I had mentioned the 2mm lateral expansion that has occurred at the C5 position such that there is now a (self measured) 34mm gap between those molars (see December 19, 2010 and April 18, 2011 posts). However I learned today that in my case, since I had my premolars removed as a child, C5 as shown in the diagram is not necessarily my proper measuring position. Again, I say in my case. Others should not extrapolate what is correct for them in this regard. In the future, I will not report any self-measuring, and I will just rely on the doctor to measure and judge the growth.

Progress: While we have not increased the width of the appliance for a few weeks, we have continued to advance the fore (anterior) portion of the appliance once a week (today being one of those days), thus moving my front teeth ever so slightly more in line. Today the doctor took photos of my bite (revealing quite a mismatch between my uppers and lowers, since my uppers have moved so much by now). She is sending the photos to Dr. Singh, and has ordered that next week, we are going to take new impressions of the uppers and lowers. All of which leads us to......

A New Phase: It is no longer a matter of guessing. I will be getting a lower appliance. I don't know a thing about it yet, so I'm not going to speculate. But the overview is, as I understand it, that we must get the lower teeth to 'catch up' with the position of the uppers, just as we are currently getting the upper front teeth to catch up with the lateral expansion. There may be more lateral expansion of the uppers later, but we need to work on the lowers first, so that the bite does not become wildly mismatched in the process.