Random Thoughts on a Wednesday

Hey, y’all!  We made it through January!  I know many people hate January… I used to be in that camp, but in recent years I’ve learned not only to embrace January, but to love it – the slowed pace after a very busy December, the coziness that you can only experience when the days are shorter and colder, and the extra time indoors that allows for lots of reading, writing, decluttering, cleaning, and working on puzzles.  I’m honestly a little sad that January is over, although, I am about ready to kick this cold weather in the shins… I’m just not built for 6 degree windchills.  ;o)

Anyway, today’s post should be a weekly recap, but I knew from the get-go yesterday that I would never be able to get it done by today, so I just decided to pivot and throw out some random thoughts instead.  My weekly recap should hopefully be up tomorrow, so if you’re looking for that, it’s coming!  ;o)

Ever since I started wearing my Invisalign retainers, my body has rather quickly started spiraling back into the face, neck, and jaw tension, headaches, dizziness, unsteadiness, sensitivity to light, and mild vertigo spins originally caused by my braces rubber bands that I have fought for so long to resolve. 

Four days after I started wearing the retainers, I started feeling that familiar ache in my jaws and within a couple of days, the rest of my symptoms were back in full force, save for the major vertigo, which has mercifully, stayed away.   

After having a couple of months of feeling almost totally normal, that was a hard pill to swallow, my friends.  I have been seeing my upper cervical chiropractor diligently for nearly eight months to correct the issues that the braces rubber bands brought on, and in the blink of an eye, eight months of work almost unraveled completely.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “Doesn’t it feel great to have your braces off?!” and I honestly don’t know how to answer because while yes, yes it does feel great to not have hunks of metal in my mouth anymore, I’m still not getting any relief because the retainers are worse.  The braces alone weren’t the cause of my issues – it was the rubber bands that caused the issues – and I hadn’t been wearing rubber bands for months.  The retainers put the same kind of pressure on my jaws that the braces rubber bands did, hence the reason why my body fell back into the same patterns.

Anyway, I was able to get in for an emergency visit with my orthodontist first thing Monday morning, and I *think* we have everything sorted out, so I’m praying that means there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel.  We are completely scrapping the Invisalign retainers – he told me those are risky anyway because they either work, they don’t work at all, or they cause people to have similar issues to the ones I’m having.  So, I’m not the only one… and trust me, a quick search of the internet will tell you that I’m definitely not the only one.  The Invisalign retainers can cause a plethora of issues, especially for people with TMJ issues.  I’ve had TMJ issues for 20+ years, so that explains that. 

The solution for me (well, hopefully anyway) is that they ended up putting a permanent retainer on my bottom teeth.  It’s just a wire that is cemented to the back of my bottom six front teeth.  It’s teeny tiny and hardly noticeable, so I’m hoping it’s the right solution.  Then for my top teeth, they’re having a traditional retainer made… like the OG roof-of-the-mouth 90s style that you think of when you hear the word retainer.  Neither should affect my jaw in any way (I pray they’re right about that), so I should finally get some relief next week when I get my new top retainer. 

And thankfully, I already had an appointment scheduled with my upper cervical chiropractor this Friday, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  I’m praying my atlas hasn’t moved out of place again with all the shifting my jaw did with the retainers in, but if it has, I know he’ll be able to get me straightened back up!  Then, hopefully all my issues will resolve as quickly as they came back.

So anyway, that’s what’s been going on around these parts, and I’m trying my very best not to let the setbacks get me down.  One day, I plan to write a very long, very detailed post about my vertigo and how the braces rubber bands caused it + my journey with the upper cervical chiropractor to get everything resolved.  It was a struggle to find any information out there when I needed it the most, so I’d love to have all the info in one place to help anyone else who might be out there suffering.

Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble on about my braces and retainers some more… this post was probably pretty boring, so cheers to you if you made it through the whole thing!  I’d originally planned to write about some other random things, too, but all this just came out, and I think that’s enough for today. 

Guess I should retitle my post to “Random Thoughts About Braces and Retainers on a Wednesday."  Haha.

Happy Wednesday, y’all!