Braces: The First Visit

It has been awhile ages since I last updated this rusty blog.

Anyway what got me back into writing is that I wanted to keep records of my braces journey.

Wait. Braces? Yes, Braces.
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It was a major decision I made at the start of this year. I decided that appearance was important afterall. It was tough deciding where to have the treatment at. I eventually picked KTPH because I was so impressed with the dentists there.

I had my first appointment today, on the 26th Jan. Sigh, I was late on my first appointment. So the dentist asked me why and I had to tell her honestly that I was delayed from the bus ride (which is true). I dislike taking buses because of how irregular the intervals are especially for long distance bus routes.

But that's not important. She recommended an x-ray to examine the condition of my teeth and how densely packed they are. So I went back to the B1 Clinic and had it taken. There were two types of x-rays I had to do. One was which I had to bite down on some kind of plastic and the other one was where my head was fixed and the machine just goes around your head taking a 360degrees view of it.

The results were out shortly and here's the bad news. The wisdom teeth which I thought I didn't have, had always been there. Just impacted.

Impaction basically means your teeth are too crowded so the 3rd molars which are your wisdom tooths are unable to emerge from the gum and grew horizontally. This is a bad shock for me. I didn't expect this to happen. So I went back to my orthodontist and she provided me with a course of action.

1. Remove wisdom teeth
2. Remove 4 more teeth for braces
3. Get braces on concurrently with extraction

It is now more troublesome that I have to remove my wisdom teeth but its a stage I have to go through nevertheless. So after that I went to the clinic counter to book an appointment with the maxillofacial surgeon. Then I remembered how expensive it is going to cost. That's why most NSF had theirs extracted during active days under a highly subsidized rate. But not for me because I thought I didn't have any.

I needed to get a referral letter so I called up the polyclinic to book an appointment. Woodlands were so packed that I had to wait at least three months but..luckily I managed to get an appointment at Toa Payoh polyclinic on the 3 Feb (Wed), because someone just canceled the appointment. yay!

That's about, I shall update my experience at the polyclinic in another post. (: