No not me !!!
You've thought when you hear you have to get to the orthodontist. Out of good desire and not to disappoint your parents, you will go.
The brace is for this time very populair and a hot item, you don't have to be afraid to be abused.
On you're first appointment slides, different rontgen-pictures and bite-impressions are taken.
A week later the result is known and you go back. On the table lies a rontgen-picture of your hole face, seen from the side. On the picture a lot of lines are drawn and numbers have been filled in. The orthodontist begins to tell you that your upper jaw is to far forward and that they're going to solve it with a headgear, it says nothing to you, but it won't be very excited. You're to afraid to ask what a headgear is.
The orthodontist comes back with a big plastic block with iron wires all over and through it. You've to open your mouth very wide, the orthodontist puts the big block into your mouth and pushes it against your upper teeth. You hear a click, now you have to bite close and open again and repeat it about 10 times. You notice that as you close your mouth your lower jaw is pushed forward. From about your eye-teeth to the back of your mouth there are plastic plates on either your upper and lower teeth, that are between the outside of your teeth and your cheecks. There runs an iron wire along the outside of your upper front teeth. From the plastic side-plates run wires downwards, at the the end of it, just behind your lower front teeth, is a plastic block, which makes your lower jaw push forward when biting your mouth close. You get to hear that this is a Frankel-application, the most complicated of it's kind. You still don't know what a headgear is, but it has to be this, it can't get worse. You have to come back in a week. You have to keep the Frankel in you mouth for 4 hours at night and 4 hours at day, at preference in a succesive period of 8 hours.
A week later you come back, your whole mouth hurts from the Frankel, but you have got up with 8 hours a day, although it was with breaks, because you wasn't able to keep up.
This time you're not being helped by the orthodontist himself, but by a friendly female assistent. "Lie down in the chair, you're here for the extra-oral brace, aren't you" says the assistent.
"Extra-oral brace, no, for the headgear". The assistent loves friendly "That's the same".
Oh no, you think at yourself, what an awful word, an extra-oral brace. You hope that you get one with a necklace, and than an old-fashined with an elastic necklace in a dark colour, that's not so outrageous. But you think you shouldn't be lucky, at least it will be a modern kind with a neckstrap with outrageous white plastic adjustment-strips with holes at the end to adjust it. But maybe it can be worse than that.
Just a little later the assistent comes back with a hole set of elastic straps, and yes, white plastic straps with adjustment-holes on it. She demands to get the Frankel out of your mouth, you do so and give it to her, she shoves a bow through little tubes on the Frankel. She bents the wire of the Frankel at the end, so the bow is fixed on the tubes of the Frankel. At the centre of the bow is a bigger bow with hooks at the end. She puts the Frankel in your mouth again, but this time with an extra-oral brace mounted on it. The assisten places the hook on the left side through the third hole of the adjustment-strip, pulls the cap of outrageous deep red straps over the back of your head and mounts the other adjustment-strip onto the right side. You immediately feel your upper teeth pushed back and upwards. The assistent says the wearing-schedule keeps the same and you have to get back in six weeks. The assistent marks the third hole on each adjustment-strip and lets you put everything out and in again several times to get experienced.
After six weeks you come back and they're checking if everything goes well and if you keep up with your wearing-schedule. Than you have been told that the exra-oral brace with Frankel has to be worn 16 hours a day from now on, of which you have to wear it the whole night. Now you have to go on the streets back to home, for the first time with the awful extra-oral brace that everyone can see. Last time you've been fetched by car, but this time you have to walk.
Pictures of headgear with necklace (N/A)
Pictures of headgear with headcap (N/A)
Pictures of combination-headgear (N/A)
Pictures of facemasks (N/A)
Famous people who wore braces in their youth
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