At this appointment, we are replacing the wires, checking how much the spaces have closed and making adjustments. The spaces in my lower teeth have quickly closed up, and my upper teeth have got just some small spaces behind the canines. On the upper teeth, I’m going to replace the power chains, while on the lower, she has put a little metal twisty wire between each bracket to keep the teeth close together so that the spaces don’t reopen. There’s no more active pressure because we don’t need to close any more spaces, but it’s keeping it as it was. She has added these little metal twisty wiring that joins bracket to bracket, keeping all the teeth together.

It’s really exciting because the lowers are nearly done. We are on the final wire on the lowers. The lowers are nicely straight. My bite has settled nicely. We’ve got everything where we want it to be, and there’s only one tooth on the upper jaw, my front upper left one, that requires slight tweaking, but everything else is where it’s supposed to be. We are discussing potentially removing my lower braces first, and then allowing the top ones to straighten, just because it’s minor cosmetic correction left now.

The bite has been corrected, the spaces have been closed, and the crowding has been corrected. We discussed removing the lower braces. We don’t tend to remove braces in stages, so in most cases (90%), if we remove braces, we remove them both at the same time, because the teeth and jaws move in sync together.

At this appointment, what Anna did for me was place a twisty wire on the lowers, check that everything is fine with the lowers, which was fine, and replace the power chain on the upper. What she also did, put a little bend in the upper wire, just to treat that one tooth that requires further movement. Then, we’ll review it in four weeks time and see how that’s going.

I’m excited. At the same time, what Anna did was take a mould of my lower teeth to prepare a fixed retainer, so when I have my lower braces removed, she can fit the fixed retainer straight away so my teeth won’t move back. I’m excited about the next appointment, also because we will be removing the bite blocks at the appointment, and as I’ve said before because I grind quite habitually, the bite blocks have been the hardest part for me.