Brace face...

Well I realised yesterday that I should have been an orthodontist.

After what seemed like a very long time of having the orthodontist touch my teeth(seriously nothing is weirder than having your teeth fondled.) opening and closing my mouth and having my jaw wiggled into it's proper position he laid it down for me. He said a bunch of things about bites and crowding and asymmetry but the the two things he said that really stood out were this...
"Your looking at a year and a half to two years and the max cost would be 6300 for everything."

Huh.

He said it could be less but it wouldn't be any more than that, it really depended on my teeth.

Were talking old school silver braces here. My teeth don't even qualify for the Invisalign system.

I always wanted the silver ones though so it's cool.

Then he mentioned my jaw and how my bite is all sorts of messed up because my bottom jaw decided to stop growing before my top jaw did. I do sometimes notice if my mouth is closed all the way that my chin is off to one side. I tend to not close my mouth all the way because it starts to hurt my jaw. So this off side chin of mine could be fixed if it really bothered me...by breaking my jaw. Whoa right? That wouldn't happen until 6 months before my braces came off and as the Ortho said "It's not fun and you wouldn't want to go outside for about a week and you eat only liquids or mush for about 6 weeks."
It's something to think about but it would mean I didn't have to wear a night guard every night. Nothing sets the mood like a night guard.

I sort of have to get braces. At this point my teeth are shifting because I clench them while I sleep, the night guard just keeps them from wearing down, when I wake up in the morning I've clenched my teeth so hard that they are stuck in the guard and I have to pry them off. In the last little while it's been getting harder to actually chew, I have to have yogurt for breakfast because I honestly can't chew for the first few hours of my day.

But YIKES 6300 dollars is a lot of money! Of course he has a payment plan but I still need to come up with an extra 1300 for the initial payment. I'm seriously thinking of getting a part time job on weekends. Sigh.