Tuesday October 10, 2017

Week 57

Today was another office visit with Dr. Jusino. I am into month 13 of my treatment, estimated to be 18-24 months. When I look in the mirror, I have to admit thinking what so many people think at this point in their care: "My teeth look great and I can’t imagine what more needs to be done”. Am I anxious to finish? Absolutely!  I know that root and tooth stability is key to long term success but, this stage of allowing the teeth to ‘set’ in the bone seems to be endless. As an adult patient, this takes longer than with teens. Every time I look in the mirror, I have to remind myself to be patient.

During my visit, I was told that Dr. Jusino was working on ‘centering the midline’. He wants the point of contact between the two upper middle front teeth to line up perfectly with the point of contact of the two lower middle front teeth. In this photo, you can see the offset midline at the beginning of treatment. Elastics do a lot of different things over the course of care and for the next several weeks, he has me wearing only one elastic on the right side to try to ‘pull’ the midline to the right. The alignment is off by about 2.0 mm. It doesn’t seem like a lot but to a dentist, it might as well be a foot. Dentists have been trained to see this kind of detail so, using something like midline alignment (or non-alignment) is a measure of success. Dr. Jusino works very hard to achieve balanced midlines.  I’m curious to see the effectiveness of a single small elastic.