Me and my vampire teeth

   At some point in my childhood, I developed vampire teeth. Don’t get it? Let me explain. You see, it was that point after I’d lost all my milk teeth and all that was left was permanent teeth. I think I was around 9. My lower jaw was fine, my upper one, not so much. My upper canines couldn’t come down properly, so they were suspended somewhere midway between the other teeth. Hence the term ‘vampire teeth’. My brother on the other hand was born with perfect dentition so yeah, I’ve been a little jealous. 

  

 

  It was mostly a private joke between my mom and I. I might have even once pretended to suck someone blood (lol! Don’t judge) but things got serious when I was 11. Maybe it was the whole puberty thing and my mom decided she didn’t want her daughter to grow-up with weird dentition. For the sake of my self-esteem or something. I don’t know but I should probably ask her. When I was 11, she decided that I needed to see a dentist. I was beyond-freaked out. My dad is a doctor and my mom’s a nurse. Before then I had never had any reason to go to a hospital. I also didn’t have a very high opinion of dentists in general because you know, kids tell horror stories. But there I was, without a choice in the matter.

  

So we went to see the dentist. And after poking around in my mouth for like a minute he announced that my mouth was too small for my teeth. Yes, I was offended. I was all like ‘Ati my mouth is what???’ His course of treatment?

1. Get an x-ray of my head (This was cool! I mean c’mon!)

2. Remove my pre-molars. The upper ones to make space, the bottom ones just to match. A total of 4 teeth (Yes, I’m an adult with 24 teeth. Minus 4 because my premolars were removed. Minus another 4 because my wisdom teeth haven’t come out yet)

3. Fit me with braces after my canines came down (Was not looking forward to that one). This was also the reason why I developed an American accent in class 5 (Will explain later)

   So yeah, it was a painful process. They had to use a local anaesthetic on my gums before removing the premolars. An anaesthetic that was injected into both the inner and outer part of the gum immediately surrounding the chosen teeth. A total of eight injections (Ouch!).

   Also, braces work by slowly physically moving the teeth to the desired position. And they have to be tightened after every like 2 weeks to compensate for the distance the teeth have moved. My teeth were sore after every tightening and every time I took off the braces to eat (Mine were the temporary kind).

   About the American accent...My upper braces had a retainer. This plastic-like thing that goes over your palate (The roof of your mouth). This thing that wasn’t supposed to be in my mouth, but was there anyway. It seriously messed-up my pronunciation. It was like trying to speak with a huge wad of gum in your mouth. So I tried harder to pronounce my words properly and bam! American accent for a whole year! (Which was also kind of cool)

That’s the full story. I didn’t need the braces anymore by the time I turned 13, and now I have a great smile! (Thank-you mom). So in the end, it was worth it!

Ciao...