The Power Chain! (And my first broken bracket!)

The power chain……sounds like a construction tool and a little scary doesn’t it!!

Its not!

I just had one put on, I have had some gaps appear (my lower incisors have decided they are not on board with our treatment plan and have decided to move on their own!!) so now we have to make a diversion to work on them! And all this started because I broke a bracket! I know I know I am an ADULT in treatment and I have no excuse to why I have broken a bracket! How did i do it, you may ask? I actually don’t know!!!

Lets back up a week or two, I was traveling back to the USA from London with my sons, we got on to the plane and in all the chaos of finding our seats while carrying 4 bags and trying to keep an eye on the boys, getting situated and cramming our bags and toys and snacks and electronics and general clutter into our seats and settling in I must have been smacked in the mouth with something and my bracket came loose, maybe it was one of the 300 snacks I packed to occupy us for the 9 hour flight, maybe it was a delayed loose bracket from being hit in the mouth with a baseball by my 6 year old son last month (OUCH) I genuinely do not know the exact moment my bracket came loose, all I do know is that when I got off the plane it was loose!

So, when I returned to work from my trip I sat down in Torys chair and showed her my broken bracket! She repositioned and stuck my bracket back on, changed my wire and we were all set. She took the opportunity to reposition another bracket to make the most of the wire I was being put in. Over the next days following my adjustment, I felt the usual pain of having an adjustment and felt my teeth moving and adjusting. A few days later when my teeth had settled into the new wire and their new position I noticed two of my front incisors had moved forward and created a gap.

With my limited knowledge, my guess for what happened was that the tooth that I had the bracket repositioned on was still rotated, and the newly positioned bracket along with the new wire had done its job and rotated my tooth to the correct position (finally). This enabled those naughty incisors to have some space and freedom so they moved into a comfortable position they chose! So they did!!

Bringing us back to today…here we are with two teeth out of position and a lovely gap in-between my 2 front incisors! In comes Tori with the POWER CHAIN! Its not nearly as bad or scary as its name! The power chain we use is made from the same elastic that ligature ties are made from (we do not use ligature ties in our office). In essence, power chains are like a bunch of ligatures linked together. They are placed as one continuous band from one tooth/bracket to the next, linking them together applying force to make the teeth move faster and help closing gaps that have been created.

As of today, I have moved back to my previous wire and now am the owner of a beautiful power chain across my lower teeth! (I have already taken two tylenol – yes, I am that much of a baby) Tori advised that I could pick the color, “Would I like bright pink??” “No thank you,” I graciously declined, “I am more than happy to have them blend in with my wires and bracket thank you!”

I am now under strict orders to be more careful (no more broken brackets please!!) and we’ll see how the power chain works out closing my gap back up!

Have a great last week or two of summer 🙂