“Jury's Still out on Results, Experience Not So Great”

I am on tray 16 of 16 on my upper and 16 of 21 on my lower. My desire was to straighten out a very crooked upper front tooth. My ortho wanted to straighted my bite all around. I have 1 more week on my 16th set (averaged 2 weeks per set)and am not convinced my front tooth will look the way I want it to. But since I have 11 more weeks to go on the lowers, I'm optimistic about the asthetic value I was seeking. As for the overall experience, the pain associated with each new set of trays was manageable (especially with a couple of Advils!). My major complaint throughtout this entire process is that my trays seem to not be fabricated very well. The inside of my mouth (particularly my cheeks, but always the sides and underneath of my tongue) is constantly cut and bleeding. My trays have very sharp, and in many places, convex edges. My ortho tries to grind off as much of the sharpness as he can, but, still no relief. I started using dental wax to smooth over the sharp edges. This works very well, but is a pain to keep applying everytime I take the trays out and put them back in. I find I reach my limit with the trays after about 5 hours and then I take them out for a few minutes of relief, whether I'm eating or not. I find it very uncomfortable to always have "something" in my mouth. It's analogous to having something stuck between your teeth and driving you crazy when you can't remove it because you don't have a piece of floss handy. All in all, at the age of 50, I'm hoping it will all be worth it.