Braces will soon go

Hi everyone, what a shock to hear from me!

My braces are still on but I think we are nearly there. Until tonight I wasn't sure if I was happy with my newly moved-over midline, but I took these photos and ran a ruler from the point between my eyebrows and down to the centre of my chin, and indeed it is bang on the middle. The reason it doesn't look it is because my nose goes off to the right! I can live with that.

The reason they're still on is because the bands and spring used in the moving over of my midline pushed some side teeth up and over and various little things that just have to be fixed now. All fixable though. I have no date for when they'll come off but I'm expecting it to be in the next 3 months or so. It will be a beautiful thing.

This was me just over a year ago... a month before my surgery.

Plus check out this link for some 'before' photos: http://jawtilting.blogspot.com/2009/07/16-days-some-beforeafter-photos.html It's the ones where I'm wearing a red shirt that are the 'before' ones. In the non-smiling ones, my back teeth are together and my lips are relaxed. They never touched unless I forced them down. I am LOVING the change. The function more than the looks (not that I dislike the looks).

I still have some loss of sensation in my upper right lip so I guess it's permanent. It's not totally numb. It's not a big problem for me although if I could wave a wand I'd fix it.

And how about that terrible jaw joint pain I had after the surgery: NIL. All gone. Phew.

Interesting how my cheek bones jut out so much now. Is it ageing... is it because my face is shorter.... is it because I don't clench my jaws at night now (I think! well sometimes I think I do but nothing like before) and therefore my overdeveloped muscles there have shrivelled... I don't know. I don't think they usually look as bad as they do in the photo - the flash accentuates them.

Headaches: still bad. Bummer. I am currently launching into a rather painful no chocolate stint to see if it helps.