I've been late putting out this post, but on Monday I got a tooth to fill in my gap, YEA!
I was in the chair for about an hour, but it was worth it. The way the tooth is attached is that it is on the wire for the braces. As such, Dr. F put in a really think wire - think steel rod. Then Dr. F used some thin wire to tie it in too. I have to say it seems really sturdy in there. But the girl had a lot of trouble putting the wire in, it was a miscommunication between Dr. F and her - she was trying to feed the wire to my back teeth, but the wire only had to go to the tooth one in from the back. Also of note, Dr. F made the tooth a touch shorter then the ones next to it, so that it wouldn't be taking any pressure from biting on it.
I was in quite a bit of pain when Dr. F was putting the tooth on the wire. It's next to my middle tooth that hurts, so a new thick wire combined with all that movement from tying on the tooth, it was bad. It was the kind of pain that your eye want to cry, the pain doesn't make you cry, but it's so close to the tear ducts that you can't control it. I didn't actually cry, but I felt close to it. But in the next chair was a young girl who I think was crying and in quite a bit of pain. I must admit that I figured me crying wouldn't help her and I had to be tough and that gave me a little extra incentive to keep the tears in my eyes.
But I have to say, the tooth looks great! The picture was a self portrait with my iphone so it's not the best, but I think it gets the point across. I'm a smily happy go lucky kind of person, I now find myself, when I'm smiling, to be totally conscious of the fact that I now have a teeth (and hence not flashing my toothless smile) and it feels much better, I'm less shy about it. It's a good thing.