My sister sent me this ad she just filmed for Invisalign. Got it at the same time I checked my email and got #1′s request. Looks like something’s in the water.
Invisaline
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My friend Erin (#1!) just sent an email asking her buds for tips on braces. Seems a coworker of hers just got them for the first time and is bummin’. I think I may have had a few things to share. Go figure. I like how she refers to getting braces as having them “installed” like cabinets.
From Erin:
Hey, did any of you kids have braces growing up? My rad coworker just had some installed and he needs advice on how to deal. Tips for what to eat and how to deal with maintenance and whathaveyou?
Please help, he is very sad.
Erin
My reply:
Did I have braces?
oh man.
answer is yes.
And do I have them again now?
Oh yeah baby.
And do I have stuff to say? You can’t stop me!
First of all, carry that portable toothbrush around with your wallet. Brush while you drive. It’s pretty rewarding because you can spend more time just kinda cleaning up and you can feel if things are clean with your tongue.
Get a box of the plastic toothpics your ortho gives out and buy a pocket mirror.
Hit them up for LOTS of wax. Even if you don’t need it then, you’ll be happy you have it when you need it.
Buy a water pick. They rock. It’s like the thing your dentist cleans your teeth with. It’s kinda loud and very messy, but soooo nice and feels cool.
Invest in an electric toothbrush. Get the good one. It’s worth it.
I get my teeth cleaned 3 x’s a year now so I have to pay for one of them since my insurance only covers two, but I had to get a couple fillings after they took the back bands off my lower teeth as a teen and I do not want to do that again.
WEAR YOUR RUBBER BANDS
It’s so worth doing everything your ortho says. If you do everything they say, you will probably fast track yourself. I was supposed to have braces for 18 months before getting my jaw surgery (long story) but I only had to do 1 year and now I will probably have the braces another 1 year to 18 months after surgery which means I am 6 months ahead of schedule. Pretty sweet.
Seriously. Wear that stuff. I don’t care if it hurts. Wear it!
Have your dentist and/or ortho explain to you the dangers of moving teeth too fast and you will understand that slow and steady wins the race. If they want you to wear rubber bands to get something to move and it moves after a week, the extra 3 weeks or whatever that they have you wearing is for stability to get your roots to establish themselves in this new place.
My motto: It’s never too late. So whenever / wherever, if it occurrs to you that you haven’t done something you were supposed to re: your teeth, just do it.
Did you expect this frikkin lecture?
They used to let you chew sugarless gum, but now you get nada. That’s ok. You don’t need anything hanging out in your bands for a couple years. Sugarless or not, it’s very dangerous.
No apples (unless you cut them into little pieces) or hard things…it’s only glue holding those puppies on so if you really wanted to you could bust one off. Not worth it.
Unfortunately, Indian food is no longer your friend. Turmeric turns your bands a nice yellow…maybe if you love indian food, get yellow rubber bands so you know, you can’t do any worse.
Do you have clear or metal braces? Maybe clear on top, metal on bottom?
Oh…use that flouride mouth rinse they give you after you brush every time. if they don’t give you some, let me know and I will send you the name of the stuff I got. It’s supposed to prevent decay. I’m all over that.
Welcome to the club.
You’ll be so stoked when they’re off…but for now, revel in the fact that braces gives you the right to eat ice cream and yogurt and mashed potatoes til the cows come home. 
Hope that helped!
Shelby
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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One thing about having a sleeping disorder is my inability to follow through on all the millions of things I *want* to do. Sometimes (most of the time) it takes missing or bumping up so close to the deadline that my choices become DO or Fail with a very very small margin of error.
This does not work well as a way of life. The problems build upon each other and feed into the habits which do not lead to a whole lot of comfort and ease in one’s existence.
Here’s my typical life:
Have something to do (ie: get up at a certain time, leave by a certain time, arrive by a certain time, NOT mess up), but I am tired. Tired makes me: lazy, grumpy, not think straight, very very clumsy, easily frustrated, immuno-suppressed AND unable to heal well. Tired means I love/hate my snooze button. Tired as a result of sleep apnea means waking up every morning of my life with a very sore throat and a head full of horrible images and stress because all my dreams were of continuous struggle, fear and pain.
So right off the bat, I have no internal motivation to get things done. Only the external motivation of stress and deadlines and fear and necessity which themselves, all lead to the magnification of the internal stressors that got me here in the first place.
Whew! What a mouthful! For now I am really just getting all my thoughts down. Organization is going to have to come later…though seemingly sooner over later since I am already sleeping so much better.
Granted, right now I am working on pain management most of the time, but I already feel a million times better because of this surgery!
I can breathe so much better with the repair of my deviated septum. I can breathe so much MORE with the advancement of my jaw and the subsequent huge expansion of my airway. Best of all, my sleep is so much more restful than it has ever been. My dreams are benign in comparison to the horror I’d been through every time I closed my eyes pre-MMA. I get more done even with all this pain. I can’t wait to see if that person I’ve struggled to be for so long is actually a possibility. How cool is that?
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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I have tied a pair of black tights around my jaw. I thought I wouldn’t need a chin bra anymore, but it appears it’s just what I need to relax el chino and not chomp and grind myself into utter devastation.
My cat is dumb, but I do actually think she’s on to something. She gets all loud and annoying when she is trying to get my attention. Loud like knocking things over onto hard slippery surfaces and batting them around and knocking everything over and bugging the poop out of me until I get up and figure out what she wants. Yes, very annoying, especially when it’s all about her needs, but this morning my alarm went off at 7 (2 hours after my 5 pm oxy dose) and I was too tired and in too much pain to even move. 8 of 10 pushing 9.5 really fast) I think I would have turned off the alarm and slept another 2 hours only to wake up in 10 out of 10 pain, but Rira got out of her little basket and started pushing things around on the table. Things like my cell phone/alarm clock and my feeding syringe.
She was making a big ruckus so I sat up and she meowed and was very aggressively keeping me awake though came nowhere near my chin (something she loves to butt up and rub against). I managed through that sleepy too much pain tired fog to take my drugs at which point Rira shut up. It was very weird.
I am going to come out of this recovery thinking my cats communicate with me and that they wouldn’t eat my body until it had started to decompose which is awfully nice of them. And so, another crazy cat lady is born. I wonder if the 60′s produced a plethora of crazy cat ladies.
I have a sexy chin bra.
smac
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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I seem to have linked to the same video 3 times last time…oops!
I fixed it.
If you so desire, try them out now.
smac
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definitely need to know how to type better.
keep writing notes to myself. Totally lucid seeming thoughts until I get enough energy to write it down then feel the almost pain of consciousness when I have to wake up enough to write it and then realise it is utter nonsense even though it meant so much sense right before I woke up to write it. There are at least 2 different pieces of my brain working at the same time and i can’t decide which one to listen to. I also know I only have 25 minutes til next oxycontin dose and pain is at an 8 right now so need something to distract myself until 7am but am not allowed to pass out or may sleep through dose time and wake up from pain 10 and that i cannot bear. am total wuss.
Somehow set alarm for pill for 6 not 7 and so took 1 hour early. Should not be in charge of dispensing my own meds.
Should set up doses when sober like xyrem. really can only be depended upon to hear alarm and take drugs…can’t reset alarm…
pain at 8.5
truck backing up outside…beep beep beep I WONDER WHAT IT IS. trash? annoying. whatever, it’s Tuesday? or is it Wednesday? It’s Jan 2 I think.yes. It’s some sort of trash truck and is now idling beneath bedroom window. I am in living room. Poor Court. Can’t be good to have all that fucking activity happen directly be;ow hi. Oh it’s recycling.. NOT cool. Maybe Court should sleep in other room,..but street noise is loud too. Wish the garbage wasn’t collected right below our window. Can’t they have it collected on other side of building? Break up the noise?
What is layout of apartments on other side? Are their master bedrooms on the outside wall?
Very inconsiderate. At least give us double paned window on outside wall.
Yes. Need double paned windows then things much better. What are odds of that happening? Heat goes out window cold comes in. Very un energy efficient. Washer dryer sucks ass. And now 1.25 wash 1 dollar dry and never gets dry in one cycle no matter how little you put in.
Landlords and prop managers hate me. Not my fault light cover fell on my head the month I moved in. Didn’t ask for this stuff.
Reminds me I have to call Mary Spriggs but I can’t talk. Shoot. Ask Court to call? Settle claim. She’s a piece of work. Will pretend she didn’t get my fax re: compensation for lost wages and gas. Why so difficult?
ow.
6:47 stabbing pain in upper right gum. Add to dull stabbing ache in lower jaw. Am I clenching my teeth?! Please make 7am happen soon so i can take my oxycontin and sleep for 2 more hours without worrying. i guess I really don’t like pain. More than I thought. It’s pretty sucky.
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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He’s very excited to show me that one can count to 31 in BINARY on one hand. I am very scared. I can’t tell the difference between most of the numbers because he can’t independently operate his fingers like I think he’s trying to but…dude…
TRUE Geeknees. It exists. Right here.
And now he’s practicing scales on the piano because he needs more finger dexterity to COUNT IN BINARY on his fingers.
Two thumbs up is evidently 48.
Now you know.
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Now I am one of those people who surfs video sites. I just emailed 2 videos to about 10 people and I can’t do that to them anymore…
So I will simply post them for when you’re bored off your ass so I don’t fill up your inbox and become one of those people you HATE seeing in your queue because it’s just spam.
Well, pick and choose your spam.
cheers.
My momma said I could
Um…honey?
Male ballet dancers…Yup. Either gay or…
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So when you are watching a TV show and looking at Ugly betty and Selma Hyak and knowing you are waaaay closer to looking like Betty than Selma, you could get into a bit of a funk. But here’s the thing: I don’t have to worry about breathing anymore! I don’t have to worry about dying in my sleep! I don’t have to wake up having had nightmare after nightmare of overwhelming struggle and stress and try to be a normal person. I AM a normal person! I am on the path to being a normal person! I know I do care what I look like and I am bummed that I really think I look different in not a good way, but I have so much more going FOR me now than before. I’d make that trade any day.
I would also trade this whole pain thing any day, but I know it must be done and it will end.
I set alarms for my pain meds but I kind of slept through them which is great because I was getting sleep but HORRIBLE because when I woke up 5 hours later there was NO pain MANAGEMENT, there was just shaky-handed pain-wiggy me who, after getting everything inside my body that needed to be there to even think about working, utterly broke down into a blubbering sack of melted jello. Not just any melted Jello…it was yellow…or orange. It was uggy colored and sounded like a 3 year old who dropped her ice cream cone on the sidewalk and couldn’t imagine possibly going on past that moment.
Someone bronze something or dip it in gold and send it to Court. He’s 25 years old. He is a computer engineer. He is NOT a people person…and he has now added Home Health Care Worker to his job description.
It makes me so happy and warm and fuzzy inside (in a stuffed animal fuzzy not mold or fungus fuzzy way) when I get little notes or any reminder really that my friends have thought about me/are thinking about me and send their best wishes. It makes me smile. My mom brought me gardenias in the hospital. Even though they are brown now, I won’t throw them away because they still smell so good and my mommy came to the hospital to give them to me and then she gave me the bestest foot rub in the world (to which I wrote her a note saying I never realised how mediocre my foot rubs were until she gave me one). She also brought me flowers when she came over and I get to look at those all day and all night.
Anne brought me a black sparkly feather boa to bring out my inner diva, and also brought an AMAZING wood box with wooden numbers and a bunch of paper playing cards for playing Sudoku minus. It is Soooooooo awesome. I mean…sooooo awesome.
My neighbors downstairs gave me a gift package that I wasn’t allowed to open until the day of my surgery…so I opened in the car on the way there. It was a BUNCH of gifts!!! A Wired magazine. A Rolling Stone. HUGE book of Sudoku. Little Miss Sunshine the DVD and the making of book. A CD of this comedian I had heard of but Court had not and he is soooo wrongly funny. I will write his name when I remember it…I left it in Court’s car…I’ll probably request he bring it up next time he goes down there so we can listen. Oh. Too funny.
So what’s with all these people sending their well wishes and gifts and giving me their time? I hope I deserve this. I hope they get something out of it too. I have all these wonderfu intentions of doing great things for people, but inevitably, something happens and 3 years later I am going through a box and come across holiday cards I had written, addressed, stamped, and NOT mailed 3 years LATER? gr. I do have the best of intentions. I’m lucky to have friends who understand that my follow through (or lack thereof) is not a reflection on them at all, and that I am, believe it or not, trying to change.
Perhaps this surgery is the big fat boot across a cavern of hot molten lava that I needed! You never know.
smac out
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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Today is Monday, January 1, 2007. Happy New Year! The Japanese have a tradition of eating mochi to bring in the new year, but what with braces and oh a minor inability to move my jaw or even EAT, I think I’m just going to have to eat twice as much mochi next year. Look at that. 12 hours into the new year and I already have plans for the next one. Is it organization or control freakism? 2 guesses.
The scoop today is that pain is an interesting little phenomenon. Since I am little by little getting more feeling back into my lower lip, I have the extreme pleasure of adding petty flesh wound pain to the seemingly ever-present deep bone ache pain I’ve grown to know (and not to love – I’m not THAT kind of girl…I don’t think.)
I came home on Friday and that day really sucked since we had my pain meds to fill and I had forgotten to put this lame little piece of plastic with words like Insurance and Card on it in Court’s wallet. So we chanced the Longs I frequent (they don’t love me as much as the Longs in San Anselmo did *sigh*) in “Bel Mateo” (Yes, Belmont and San Mateo had a baby) only to find out that:
1. Having your mouth banded shut may look cool, but is hard to communicate through, especially when you are in pain and have suddenly lost the ability to write in english, or sandskrit (I think that’s what I was trying to do)
2. It really really sucks when they don’t have your meds and you are in pain and can’t talk and they are holding your prescription hostage and saying they have called 10 pharmacies to no avail and that they could probably get you something by maybe Monday
3. It really really REALLY sucks when you have to ask Longs to print out of Insurance information, steal back an unfilled prescription, get driven back to Palo Alto another half an hour, be in white blinding pain, go to the Cancer Clinic which is the only place that carries your meds, choke on the meds as you try unsuccessfully to manipulate elegant and stylish elephant syringe, and try to not kill the messenger who in this case is your awesome boyfriend.
Honestly, Court needs a medal… or 5. I certainly don’t know what I did to deserve such a man, but you can’t say he’s punishment for anything in my past lives (I have theories about why I’m always phsically tortured in this life), so I have to think I did something good to deserve him.
Fast forward: Friday, Sat Mom visits, Sun Anne visits (Court feeds them both and is the perfect host), Monday I wake up in the usual bath of pain and find that all that choking I have been doing on the liquid in my syringe when I attempt to multi task (I can’t even THINK about another task while I am drinking without choking) has paid off and I think I am getting an upper respiratory infection (sore throat, pain in chest) and I keep thinking of Gramps and how he choked so much after his stroke and then got pneumonia and I feel so horrible for everything he had to go through.
In conclusion, I am :
1. tired
2. in pain
3. scared/worried that I may be nursing a not so pleasant health thing.
4. thinking about Gramps and missing him and feeling so horrible about what he had to endure and thinking also, It’s a good thing this crap happens to me because my imagination is not awesome enough to come close to imagining what the human body can endure. I’m not saying I want to go through this, but I am saying I appreciate going through this. It’s both humbling and educational…and did I mention humbling? yeah. It’s all that and a melted ball of wax placed directly on exposed sensitive flesh. Awesome!
Copyright 2007 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved
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