Million Dollar Smile

I used to have crooked front teeth. Like the jongang kind. Hated them so bad, I begged Dad to let me have braces fitted. Best decision ever. It was suffering while it lasted, but worth every tooth lost, all that torture. Too be fitted with braces, I had to have two first bicuspids extracted on the upper teeth, and two more on the bottom - ouch. I had to go through two sessions of extraction, first one to remove one side of the upper and lower first bicuspids, then next session for the other side.

Undeniably, the extraction doesn't hurt as bad as when I had my impacted wisdom tooth removed. But it was traumatising nevertheless. Four good teeth gone in four days! Sigh.... On the second session, the dentist, Dr Fong in Penang, started fixing braces on both me and my sister. Man, the pressure from the braces was so bad that even the slightest touch to the front tooth was enough to send waves of torment through the entire jaw...

After diligently visiting the dentist every month for one-and-a-half year, finally I got my braces removed. Such joy to bite a whole apple without having to chop the apple into bite-sized pieces. 

So anyway I was just calling up my old orthodontist (literally old) and so asked the nurse if I could go over and get an extra pair of retainers for safekeeping/backup, just in case the current one break or something. And I found out from her that Dr Fong is retiring by end of July!

And thus, the paranoid in me booked flight tickets back for an overdue check up hehe.

The torment chair. Nothing has changed, not even the nurse! Hehehehe. Well, can't say it brings good memories though. Maybe only that one time when I had those steel things removed :D

The good ol' doc who has brightened many smiles....

Anyway, long story short, I didn't get any backup retainers done because ortho said it wasn't necessary... though he did give me something else in 'exchange' for it...

The old teeth mould! They were moulded pre-braces!

 They are kinda gross (it didn't help either that the moulds are yellow in colour!) so I thought I'd resize them real small to reduce its gross factor kekekek. SE's the one on the left and mine on the right!! Ahh... wonders of science....

Pickles think they're gross too! :p

On the way back, I was showing TY my old teeth model and he was all silent with an 'eww' look on his face. He used to have braces back then, and so I probed him, what if we kissed and we both have jongang teeth back then?  And he said..... got a lot of noise loh -.- lol! Yucks!