Excited to Be on the Road to Straight Teeth! - Leicester, England

Hello! My name is Alice, I'm a 20 year old student from England. I've always hated my teeth and they've had a big impact on my confidence. I've never had braces, so this is my first orthodontic treatment. I was quoted £2500/$4180 for my Invisalign, and will have 14 upper and lower trays. I had some filing before my first tray, and will have more before the eighth tray. I'm currently on the fourth tray and I'm happy with the experience so far. The pain of the first tray was quite intense, but from then on, the pain only lasts for several days at the start of each tray, which is fine with me! The only bad thing is that I can no longer snack all the time! Cutting eating time down to only 2 hours a day is quite a challenge for a food loving grazer like me, but I'm trying my best (ok, maybe I didn't try very hard when all the Valentine's chocolates had gone on sale, but nobody's perfect :D).

Before I decided to go for Invisalign, RealSelf was an absolute goldmine of information for me, and I found it extremely helpful. I spent so many evenings reading as many reviews as I could before my eyes started to snooze, and I can't thank you all enough! :) Initially I didn't want to take photos of my progress (which is why tray 3 is the first), perhaps because I was so used to hiding my teeth. But now I'm just as excited to share my progress with you all as I am to see the end goal!

I'm changing trays next week, so will update with a photo of tray 4 very soon. Thanks for reading, please feel free to ask me anything. :D

Here's a photo of my teeth just before switching to tray 5. I think there's noticeable movement on the upper teeth which is very exciting, but I don't feel like much is happening with the bottom teeth yet.

The first few days of tray 5 have been surprisingly pain-free, the easiest tray so far! I'm not sure if I'm just getting used to the pain or if this is just a lucky tray... we'll soon find out with the next one!

Today I noticed that my gum was quite painful and when I looked, I saw that my wisdom tooth was coming through! I'm really worried that this will interfere with my Invisalign. Does anybody know if I'll need new impressions taken? I haven't called my dentist yet, not sure how big an issue this is. Of all the times to get new teeth!

I was terrible at updating my post here, uni really got in the way :( Now I've finished uni, and I've finished treatment. In place of a written review I made a detailed video review instead, which I'll link below. I'm really happy with how my teeth turned out and would definitely recommend Invisalign!

My aim with this video was to make it as informative as possible for potential patients, so I really hope you find it useful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5wi3xlRWgc