“Am I talking funny to you?”

Holy crap! I can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks since my last visit to the good Dr. Gibberman and I haven’t blogged about it! I think I’m slowly losing my memory—it just hit me that I forgot to do this until I got my confirmation email for my next visit. SORRY!!!

So, the newest adventure with the teeth—I got my occlusal guard. It sort of looks like a retainer, but I can’t really complain because you can’t see it when I wear it. There wasn’t much to this last visit—pretty much chit chat with the gals there (yes, I said chit chat—they rock like that) and then I was back sitting in a chair getting shown my “corrective device” and a quick fitting with Dr. Gibberman.

What’s an occlusal guard you ask? Let me share since I specifically asked this question because I know inquiring minds want to know! First, it’s this clear plastic piece shaped like the roof of my mouth attached to a wire that runs at the top of gums just so it holds. Like I said, you can’t see the wire, especially since I already hide my teeth, plus my mouth just keeps its well contained. Second, it doesn’t shift my teeth around like a retainer does. It actually has this little tip on it that keeps me from biting down, which leads to the third interesting tid bit. “So Dr. Gibberman, what’s this gonna do exactly?” “Well, it’s going to re-train your brain how to hold your mouth.”

Yes, that’s right—re-train my brain. I sort of chuckled to myself at first, “haha, OK, re-train my brain!” but man, this thing is working. The first day wasn’t too bad—quickly found out why I was told to take it while eating after I bit down hard on my Jr. Bacon. You’d think I learned my lesson with the food. Oh no, I popped in a piece of gum and about made my eyeballs pop out. Crap, that hurt! I’m surprised I didn’t crack off that plastic tip I bit so hard. It was kind of hard to get used to talking with it, even though my co-workers said they couldn’t tell it was in. I even tried to keep it in and talk to this hottie—yeah, not so smooth.

So anyways, this thing is basically going to keep me from crashing my veneers (look back at another blog to reference my teeth grinding). I’m holding my mouth, jaw, whatever, in such a way that I have to learn how to correctly keep it inline (doesn’t a bar a soap do that too?). Ok, that was a lame one, but I’m leaving it in here. This guard thing isn’t too bad, but I am such a chronic gum chewer and I have done nothing but talk to people at work and over the phone that I only wear it at night and when I’m just sitting around. I can tell a difference though, so maybe a little a plastic thing really can re-train my brain.

Nothing much new will happen on the next visit. Just checking to see how my guard is working for me. I’ll be doing a zoom whitening after that and then the good times are gonna roll. Until then, I gotta wear this thing for a few more weeks. I’ll live—at least its not braces for 5 years—my patience isn’t that long!