paper work

ok so here are some of the official ortho paper work that says what exactly is wrong with my jaw. (if you're new, just click on the photo to enlarge it)

- facial profile appears concave

- downward and backward growth pattern

- small upper jaw, large lower jaw

- side bite is not well meshed

- lower teeth bite in front of top teeth

- severe crowding in the upper and lower (it's cut off but i'm assuming they would mean the teeth)

- insufficient space available for adult teeth

- top jaw is narrow relative to the lower jaw

- upper and lower center lines to not coincide

-lower jaw is possibly growing asymmetrically

- upper right and left cuspids are impacted

again, this was quite a few years ago and it's worded much differently because this was given to my parents in order for them to understand exactly what was going on

-facial asymmetry noted mandible to the left (no clue what "mandible" they are referring to, but its basically what i said about my jaws not being centered with each other)

- lip competence at rest (not really sure)

- slight retrognathic maxilla (also not really sure. so many medical terms!)

- no crepitis in joint and no limitation of opening

- dental classification III

- skeletal classification III

- mandibular prognathia

- overjet is -4mm

- overbite is less that 1mm (not sure about this one, seeing as i have an underbite..)

- maxillary midline to the right 2mm

- mild maxillary crowding

- severe mandibular crowding (oh! so i'm guessing maxillary and mandibular or whatever are the names for both jaws? why they can't just stick with top and bottom doesn't make sense at all)

- bilateral crossbite present

- #14 and #24 are absent (teeth i'm pretty sure)

- #11 has a veneer as it was injured prior to erupting (this is a tooth that i damaged when i was younger)

- maxillary construction noted

SO, all of this doesn't make too much sense to me but...hey, it's part of my orthodontic work. This is also paper work from when i was young, though I'm not sure of exactly when. It says near the bottom that no treatment is indicated, so I assume it was quite a lone time ago,. 

pictures of me now

ok, so here are some pictures of me right now, at sixteen and a half years old. You can see that the braces have definitely straightened the teeth out,and now the are straight up and down rather than leaning in towards each other and the ones "underneath" (still don't know the name, my gut is telling me canine but could be wrong. my brother calls them fangs haha)

here you can see how large the underbite is, several mm by now, but i'm not  sure of the exact number. you can also see how my top jaw is to the right (left in this, the ipod mirrors the pictures) or maybe its the bottom thats wrong. I'm not sure exactly.

the pictures are all out of order and they're real pains to move, but this is a profile of me covering the underbite. I kind of push my bottom lip up over my bottom teeth, which brings my lips together the way they should be. The only thing still noticeable is my chin, which is much larger than it should be. 

a more front view, you can see the misalignment much better from here

from the side you can really see how far apart my jaws are, i honestly can't wait until surgery! this is my biggest insecurity, even more than my stomach (which i hate too)

this is my normal smile, meaning i'm not doing anything to try and hide the underbite. it's really bad, i never smile like this EVER

so this is me from the front while i push my bottom lip back to hide the underbite. You can see my lips are kind of off kilter as a result of the one jaw being to the side a little, as well at my large chin. It isn't as noticeable here because it's kind of blending in with my chest, but if you really look it's much bigger than chins should be

here is how i smile, covering my underbite. its more like a frozen laugh, but i have myself doing it instead of smiling now, just naturally. it still doesn't completely hide it but it's alot better than the normal smile

my smile from the front. again, the one jaw is off kilter noticeably, and you can see the gap between my teeth here from the underbite. as well, you can tell how my chin juts out even from the front.

here is a normal profile, not smiling, no hiding. it's super bad, which is why i do hide it. even though i can't completely cover it, it's a lot better than walking around like this!

now, i'm the type of person who doesn't care what people think of me to an extent, however, in this society, even though i could care less about the people judging me, i do like to keep it to a minimum. we have to face it, life is better for pretty people, no matter how stupid that is.

by the way, one thing i've found is that if you're curious as to how you may look after surgery, with a normal jaw, then something i do is stand in front of a mirror and just cover my bottom jaw with my hand so my entire chin and bottom lip (Sometimes i include the top lip) are hidden, and i can only see the top half of my face. doing this allows you to kind of get an idea of, and imagine a normal bite and bottom jaw. it also works from the side if you have a second mirror to look into like i do. 

it obviously doesn't give a 100% accurate representation but i find that it just reassures me and makes me feel a little better about myself, so i recommend trying it!

ellen.

xox

just a note

so this doesn't have much to do with orthodontics, but it does concerns under bites as well as my life dealing with it. like many people probably do (if not, then I advise that you do! although if you're reading this then...obviously you have) people with under bites tend to google about them, whether it's photos of other people, or before and after photos, or peoples YouTube videos, or other blogs blah blah you know what I mean, tonight I was googling out of boredom, trying to find before and afters because I'm always nervous and wondering how much a difference this really will make to my face, and I cam across a few photos of girls on some chat site, posted by random guys who had found them saying all sorts of rude things like how ugly they thought she was and all of the things I just don't want to repeat, especially since there were so many! a few people wrote about how shallow they were being but, of course, that won't do anything. I had an angry reply all set but I thought better than to become involved and deleted it. I also found the picture below(my regards to whomever the girl in t is) you know, honestly this society makes me sick. I know it isn't everyone, but it sure is a lot of them. everywhere i go, I know that people - especially guys - notice and judge my bite. when a pretty girl walks by, she'll catch the attention of a guy and maybe they'll have a happy ever after, maybe they'll just hookup, whatever. me? I walk down the streets, and of a guy does give me a second look it's gonna be a "omg" kind of thing. and you know, even if the guy is really nice, you know that he'll still probably go for the pretty one unless she's obviously stupid and lacking common sense. anyways, I just wanted to get this off of my chest and share it with you. I mean really, how completely ignorant can the people in this society be? do people honestly think that the fact that I, or anyone, has an underbite is a mirror of our personality? or are they just so shallow that they couldn't stand looking at it until it gets fixed. well, when I have my surgery I hope (though I also doubt) that I will be pretty enough to grab some guys attention that I wasn't able to before, and I will laugh in their face as I reject them.
I mean, of course this is just a sadistic dream of mine, I doubt I'm going to end up that much better!
anywho, good night to you all, Beven though I don't really think there are many at all, and especially none who are coming back. but whatever, like I said, having this out here makes me feel good, whether it will help someone now, or a year or more from now!

ellen

pictures

ok so I have some pictures! they're old ones, one of my front and profile at ten, and some more at 14- almost 15. these are all orthodontist taken pictures, I still haven't gotten around to finding any others that really show my jaw. anyways here they are! as you can see, my face isn't quite as long as an underbite makes it at these ages, but it hs worsened as I've matured. at ten you can hardly tell at all, at fourteen the main traits are in the front, the profile isn't too- still not regular, though. my teeth, as my orthodontist has told me, almost knew in a way that they weren't right and so they tried to hide it by tilting. the tops are tilted out slightly, the bottoms are tilted largely backwards - I hadn't even realized how bad it was, or that it was even happening until he told me, and more so with braces! anyways, tomorrow I'll have pictures of me now I can you can see how it's progressed, how much straighter my teeth are, and how to underbite has progressed (especially worse because of the braces, which is normal)

me at ten years old, you can see that my profile looks fairly normal...though slightly puffy for some reason! and just a little bit unnatural (in fact, looking at this it looks just like my younger brother with longer hair and he's ten now! weird!) the front though, you can see isn't so great. i also came across some records, which said that my bottom jaw was actually more to the left than it should be. I have noticed this, but i wasn't sure if I was just being paranoid or what! I was never actually informed formally of this!

                                                                                                 

so, obviously these are the ones at almost fifteen years old, about a year and seven months or so ago. I definitely look different than the one taken when i was ten! like I said above, my face isn't quite as long here as an underbite causes your face to be- however, I'm assuming that this is because I'm young. Possibly, my face is considerably longer compared to others at this age. I know that now, over a year later my face has matured more and my face is longer. It does look longer in the profile, though, than from the front. The underbite still isnt quite as noticeable as it is now - maybe i was subconsciously blocking it like i taught myself to do! i don't exactly remember! It definitely is different than normal profiles, my chin is more pronounced and the bottom jaw is noticeably too far forwards. But I suppose it isn't as bad as I always thought it was. Still, in high school, people are shallow jerks so it was probably bad enough for them. In fact, I know it was because one of my 'friends' told me about one of the football guys mocking me. Nice, right? Good thing I don't plan on, nor have I ever planned on, associating with them during or after school.

below is just an xray of my profile, where you can see the actual teeth in a very noticeable underbite, probably atleast 5mm I would say - so quite large - and increased after braces yay! -_-

so here are some of my teeth, obviously. you can see what i mean now by "tilted", basically pointing towards eachother, and moreso my bottoms considering that the top jaw is almost in the right spot (cant remember if it's being moved forwards or back, but i'm think forwards). anyways, you can also see the horrible crowding, and also those two canines that I had said in my last post were 'underneath' the bottom, middle teeth. thankfully, that has been fixed ! (again, pictures tomorrow!) As well, this crowding is still after several pulled teeth! not fun! hopefully I'm not going to need anymore after my wisdoms, which were done last august! I still can't believe it was so long ago!!

oh and here is one more of my at fourteen, which I didn't notice had been pushed down here! and i don't feel like moving and reformatting, so yeah. From the front, much worse than at ten - the underbite much more progressed - but still the same idea, making it worse looking from the front. I don't smile much - especially not like this! I can't wait until I'm able to, without being insecure! And I can't wait to feel my teeth together in the right way! I've heard that running your teeth along them once their aligned is an amazing feeling and I expect it is! so many people take something so simple for granted, while, for people like me, it's actually one of our biggest wishes!

Hello!

Well hey there everyone!
I'm a little late starting, but I have decided to officially start my own blog all about my life concerning my orthodontic work!
So, I don't have any pictures to post as of now, but for my first post I'll just explain a little of what I know.
I am sixteen now and have been going to the orthodontist since I was at least eight or nine years old. I've gone through countless retainers, overnight headgear, spacers blah blah blah all of that fun stuff.
My teeth were pretty crooked, I must say, mainly my bottom teeth. Two of them, (canines maybe? I'm not sure...they're the pointed one pretty much everyone has, right next to the two middle ones) were waaay below where they should have been (you have to see pictures to understand, which I will hopefully be able to find!)
I also have a quite severe underbite. I am not exactly sure of how many millimeters, but I do know that it is VERY noticeable. I was never even aware of it until about halfway through grade seven when somebody told them that a boy in the the grade eight class had nicknamed me "Underbite" (I know, very original...and typical, shallow boys/people these days). Ever since then, it has become my biggest insecurity (of course, I would have noticed eventually...I just imagine it would have been several years later). I began to quit smiling or, when I did smile, I was VERY self conscious. I spent hours in front of the mirror trying to perfect my coverup which, eventually, I did pretty well. Although it is still very noticeable, and there isn't much I can do about when I smile, it's a lot better looking than it really is. (pictures of my coverups later)
Anyways, I've had my braces on for a year as of September 27th (the same day I get my G2 lisence! yay!). My orthodontist has told me that I need them on for about two years before surgery, but I'm hoping and praying that I will be ready to do this by the beginning of next summer, as it takes (or so I've heard) about 6 to 8 weeks to even be able to eat normal food again! I definitely do NOT want to be in school, or miss any of it! (I'm kind of a nerd!)
I DO know that right now, I am 100% committed to doing this no matter how nervewracking it is, and will be! I am so tired of being insecure every where I go, and feeling eyes one me constantly. I can't be sure that what I'm feeling is true, but wherever I go it's almost as though I can feel people judging me on my underbite, something that I can't even control! Even at school I've had people (mainly the shallow, jerks/jocks who are too big headed to even think about the fact that I did NOT in fact CHOOSE to have an underbite)
And you know, GOD FORBID I'm not beautiful and perfect.
Oh well, at least I have good grades, and I have art to help me through, as well as a few close friends (:
I don't want to be "popular" by any means, just not judged, I want to be accepted by the populars even if I'm not one of them.
You know what I mean?

I don't even know if anyone is going to read this blog! When it comes time for my surgery, I'll most likely do some YouTube videos - who knows. I probably won't be posting TOO often either, until my surgery comes close or I have some important news regarding my work!
Either way, I just like knowing that my opinions and my 'adventure' is out there, available to anybody else who may be in the same boat, looking for advice, or for comfort. To know they aren't alone, to make sure what's happening is normal, to get answers, to calm their nerves!
Hopefully I can help at least one person!
Anyways, this post is extremely long, I promise it will be the longest one I write!

Thanks for reading!
xoxox