by Kevin Tetter

Created on: August 30, 2010

For those adults that shudder at the thought of getting adult braces, consider the alternative: leaving your teeth the way they are now. Those were my choices, and it made my decision quite easy. After a lifetime of crooked teeth, the embarrassment and shame of what I considered to be unsightly could be corrected in 18 months.

This was a decision years in the making, and for a man in his forties, it could have been more of an issue than it would have been for a child. Not this year though. For whatever reason, the New Year’s resolution that had carried over so many times was about to become reality. Considering my age, every alternative was explored before making my final decision. My first choice, Invisalign, was out of the question. Not only was it cost prohibitive, but my teeth were just too crooked for that particular product to accommodate. Veneers would have looked ridiculous. Veneers and Invisalign are for those the need mild adjustments. Anything over a few millimeters needed conventional braces. There were options for those though. Clear braces was my first choice, but the orthodontist recommended the metal ones because the clear braces yellowed very quickly, and once they went on-that was it, you were stuck with yellow braces for duration. Fortunately, modern braces had come a long way since the "railroad tracks" of yesteryear. There is no way to hide braces, but the new ones are much less pronounced than the old metal tracks.

So that was it. All the caps, fillings, and cleaning had been done to prep me for this moment. There was just one more obstacle: three teeth had to come out to make room for the soon to be moving teeth. In my opinion, this would be the worst part of the entire process. The orthodontist assured me that putting the braces on would be a painless process, but removing the three teeth would require surgery. That was the first time that I had ever been knocked out for any kind of procedure. It was actual surgery. I went in, armed with all the horror stories from friends and co-workers who had related their surgical nightmares to me. At first, I was going to take it like a man with just some local anesthetic. The surgeon recommended that I be asleep. He correctly asserted that the process would be unpleasant, and there was absolutely no reason to be awake. I had a wisdom tooth extracted a few years prior, and indeed it was unpleasant. Not that there was any pain, but the sound of it all was discomforting. I took the surgeon's

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