Sunday, January 06, 2013

taking care of the braces

It's probably the tea I got at Starbucks this evening that is keeping me wide awake. By the looks of things, I'm probably going to be sleeping in come the morning. Instead of struggling to get to sleep, I've been spending the past few hours organizing my marathon training schedule along with all the races in between, as well as reading jaw surgery blogs.

Interestingly, I came across a couple of youtube videos on some of the blogs that I felt were really informative! Such as this one on the correct toothbrushing techniques for braced-up peoples:




It tastes SO nasty! Bleaugh.

So far, my braces-and-teeth care routine since I've put them on has been pretty OCD with:

  1. Brush teeth to get out any pieces of gunk,
  2. Use Interdental brush between all gaps to get out any smaller gunk and plaque in between,
  3. Brush teeth again to ensure all the interdental gunk is gone
  4. Brush tongue and top to make sure everywhere is clean,
  5. Listerine soak for 20 seconds to get rid of any leftover bacterial grossness,
  6. Recover from disgusting taste of Listerine.

The Listerine we have was in my sister's Great Eastern Run race pack from last year so I thought I'd just use it. I just don't know why it has to taste so nasty! But for the sake of ensuring a shorter amount of time with me and my braces on (cause poor health of teeth and gums can prolong the treatment time) I just have to endure it for now. Maybe when I finish the bottle, I'll try the other flavours they have. But seriously, this purple one is yuck!

It's been a while since I've gone to read on jaw surgery. Perhaps it was because after putting on my braces it somehow suddenly felt like my mind was already made up on doing the surgery so I didn't require as much information anymore. But gosh, there's so much more that I really need to read up on. Especially that my jaw surgeon told me at the last meeting we had that I need to read more because I'm going to have a ton more questions, I thought I had really better start reading! And gosh, he was right.

From questions on nerve damage, to chin-work (which I doubt I'm going to do), to recovery time, to post-surgery braces, to limitations... I already have a full list!

Okay, it's half past three! There goes plan for my morning training session. I'm off to do a little more reading.


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