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I've always been self conscious about my teeth, in...
I've always been self conscious about my teeth, in particular one of my front teeth that sticks out at an angle and actually even sticks out of my lips a bit when they're closed. I never wanted braces as an adult as I was concerned about the look so when I heard about invisalign, I jumped at the chance to finally fix my teeth.
I went to my orthodontist and found out apparently I'm a very difficult case. My front teeth are a full tooth width in front of my back teeth, but because they lean backwards, it's not obvious. I was told that I had 3 options.
1. I could just straighten the teeth. That would mean making the top teeth angle forwards as they should for a perfect bite, but then they wouldn't match up with the bottom teeth and I would have a weird bite and wear issues.
2. I could remove 2 teeth (my fours) on either side and shift the front teeth back a space.
3. I could straighten them and then get jaw surgery to move my top jaw back or my bottom jaw forward.
I wasn't keen on jaw surgery - both the risks and the cost as it would double the cost of the entire procedure - so I decided to go for option 2. I was a bit uncomfortable having two teeth removed as I was already missing my top left molar.
I got the impressions done. Some people talk about gagging and having issues with this but I found it very painless and easy and it was over fast. I then waited to hear that my aligners were in.
A few weeks later I got a call that I should come in for another consultation. It turned out that my orthodontist wasn't too happy with the idea of removing teeth either so she'd been discussing my options with other invisalign orthodontists on their online forum. She'd decided instead that my best course of action was to move all the teeth backwards and not remove any teeth. The bad part of this approach was that it meant I wouldn't see any significant improvement in the front for about a year. I also found out that, since only one of my front teeth is used in my bite right now, I'd worn it down to about half the height of my other front tooth. That meant I would need to get a veneer at the end of the treatment. I wouldn't be able to get it sooner as then my teeth wouldn't fit into the aligners. So it would actually take the whole 2 years of treatment before I would get a nice smile. Despite this, I was much happier with this course of action as I didn't really want to lose any more teeth. It seemed like the best long term solution and I was in this for the end goal. I was also really happy to hear my orthodontist was putting so much thought into the best solution for me. I could tell she was really working hard to get me the best result. She showed me the model of my teeth over time from different angles using the invisalign software and I signed off on it. I was super excited.
When my invisalign aligners arrived and I came in to get them fitted, they told me it would be about an hour to put all the attachments on. That appointment ended up taking and hour and 40 minutes and it was crazy painful. They cleaned the teeth, put glue on the teeth that had attachments and then put the alignment in my mouth (I was just going by feel but I assume the aligner had the attachments on the inside of it and that was how they got them in the right position). That part was fine but when they removed it, they had to polish off all the excess glue. They used a big, metal polisher and the noise and pain was excruciating. I didn't think I had particularly sensitive teeth but I was gripping the arms of the seat to get through it. I really hope none of my aligners fall off as I really don't want to go through that again!
After that, they put my first aligner in for me. Apparently it was hard to get in as the woman was quite rough with my mouth and ended up splitting the skin at the edge of my lip. I would have preferred if they let me try to put it in myself. I think I could have managed. They gave me my invisalign kit and told me to read over it for details. I wasn't given too much information, maybe because my appointment went 40 mins over and they were pushed for time, but luckily I'd already done my own research. One odd thing they did tell me was that I should leave the aligners in when I ate for the first day. They didn't give me any instructions about food I shouldn't eat.
It was lunchtime when I got back from work so I decided to get my usual, udon soup. As instructed, I left the aligner in but when I checked my teeth after eating, there were bits of red and green from the soup inside the aligner. I couldn't leave it like that so I ended up taking the aligner out, rinsing it and then putting it back in. I had a pretty easy time taking it out and putting it back in again. It was a little painful but nothing too bad. The first day was fine, no pain. I ended up taking it out for dinner since I'd had such an easy time earlier and that was also fine.
I have a very obvious lisp so I pretty much tell everyone that I talk to at work that I just got invisalign braces. People are surprised as they can't tell from looking. The most they can see is that my teeth look shiny, but even that is only if they get very close. That's good news. People reassure me that the lisp will go away with time but I'm not so sure.
Day two, the dull pain was constant and very distracting. I took a neurofen and that did help. I also noticed that the aligner was scratching against my gums. I decided to tough it out but by the end of the day and after two days of rubbing, I had a sore line across my gums. My husband told me off for toughing it out since he said once it's an open wound, it can cause worse problems. Acknowledging that he had a point, I decided to take the aligner out and file it down that evening.
I haven't found eating too hard so far. I've been skipping breakfast because I just don't have the time to do the whole cleaning ritual. I also usually have a snack mid morning and afternoon so that's out now too. I'm starving by lunchtime so I keep eating a massive lunch to make up for it. I know some people lose weight on the 'invisalign diet' but I'm not sure I will as I'm so hungry by the time I take my aligner out, I engulf my food. So far I've been taking about 30 mins for lunch so I can relax in the evening and have it out for a whole 1 1/2 hours which is nice. Every time it comes out it costs me 10 mins in cleaning my teeth time so I try to limit how many times I take it out.
Day three and this is the sweet relief day. The aligner is no longer so tight so I'm not getting a constant pain from wearing it, and since I filed the bottom, it's no longer scratching my teeth and the cut from the past couple of days is starting to heal. No issues today.
Day four and I realise that the aligner is now cutting into a different part of my gum. I'm at work and I don't have a nail file so I (probably stupidly) ignore it again. I'm a bit worried that if I keep this habit up I'll file half the aligner away and it'll keep digging into a different part of the gum each time, so I'm not really sure what to do. This was a tough day for food too because it's a Friday and we usually go out to eat at lunch and then have beers and snacks after work. We got out for lunch and it's fine. I go to the restaurant bathroom to take my aligner out. I'm really fast at taking it in and out now so it only takes a few minutes. Lunch takes a little longer than usual and I wait until I'm back at work to go through the whole ritual clean and floss in the bathroom, so today I lost about 50 minutes to lunch. After work I take out my aligner and drink a beer and eat popcorn with my workmates. After about 30 mins of socialising and munching I realise I have to stop now and put my aligner in or I won't have enough time left for dinner. I seriously contemplate having a popcorn/beer dinner before realising that I'm an adult and that means being responsible.
Day five and six - it's the weekend now and I've had a quiet, chill at home weekend. Usually when I stay at home I'll play video games and snack, so this time I've been playing video games and not snacking. I've been drinking water instead but it's not the same. I haven't been distracted enough to skip breakfast like I do on work days so I've been losing 20-30 mins of my 2 hours to that. This is the first time I've really felt hungry/had cravings and it's been tough. I like to snack so usually I'll eat lots of low calorie food throughout the day (grapes, carrots, salad etc). I'm vegetarian so that might be part of the reason why I eat more, lower calorie meals. My meals tend to be less calorie dense than a meat eater's. Yesterday I must have had too light a lunch because I was starving by 3pm and couldn't last any longer. I ended up blending a fruit smoothie, setting it up and making it a race to take my aligners out, drink it, brush, floss and put them back in so I didn't lose too much time. I think with dinner I ended up going about 20 mins over my 2 hours. Hopefully one day won't make too much of a difference. I find I'm having to choose my meals much more carefully now to make sure it's going to last me until my next one. I think part of it is also just that my body needs to adjust since it's used to me providing it with regular snacks.
The aligner is still rubbing raw one spot on my gums. I'm really not sure what to do since I think if I keep filing it, I might file too much away from the aligner. Since I've been at home all weekend, I've just been putting some tissue paper in between the aligner and the gums and that's been helping, but it's not a permanent solution. I'll probably try to file it again tonight. My orthodontist's system is to have us wear each aligner for only a week before switching to the new one, which I'm really happy about because it means I only have a couple more days with this one. I'm quite excited about switching to aligner 2 as it'll make me feel like I've made progress.
On another note, my lisp still hasn't gone away. It feels very liberating when I remove my aligners and can talk to people normally.
I went to my orthodontist and found out apparently I'm a very difficult case. My front teeth are a full tooth width in front of my back teeth, but because they lean backwards, it's not obvious. I was told that I had 3 options.
1. I could just straighten the teeth. That would mean making the top teeth angle forwards as they should for a perfect bite, but then they wouldn't match up with the bottom teeth and I would have a weird bite and wear issues.
2. I could remove 2 teeth (my fours) on either side and shift the front teeth back a space.
3. I could straighten them and then get jaw surgery to move my top jaw back or my bottom jaw forward.
I wasn't keen on jaw surgery - both the risks and the cost as it would double the cost of the entire procedure - so I decided to go for option 2. I was a bit uncomfortable having two teeth removed as I was already missing my top left molar.
I got the impressions done. Some people talk about gagging and having issues with this but I found it very painless and easy and it was over fast. I then waited to hear that my aligners were in.
A few weeks later I got a call that I should come in for another consultation. It turned out that my orthodontist wasn't too happy with the idea of removing teeth either so she'd been discussing my options with other invisalign orthodontists on their online forum. She'd decided instead that my best course of action was to move all the teeth backwards and not remove any teeth. The bad part of this approach was that it meant I wouldn't see any significant improvement in the front for about a year. I also found out that, since only one of my front teeth is used in my bite right now, I'd worn it down to about half the height of my other front tooth. That meant I would need to get a veneer at the end of the treatment. I wouldn't be able to get it sooner as then my teeth wouldn't fit into the aligners. So it would actually take the whole 2 years of treatment before I would get a nice smile. Despite this, I was much happier with this course of action as I didn't really want to lose any more teeth. It seemed like the best long term solution and I was in this for the end goal. I was also really happy to hear my orthodontist was putting so much thought into the best solution for me. I could tell she was really working hard to get me the best result. She showed me the model of my teeth over time from different angles using the invisalign software and I signed off on it. I was super excited.
When my invisalign aligners arrived and I came in to get them fitted, they told me it would be about an hour to put all the attachments on. That appointment ended up taking and hour and 40 minutes and it was crazy painful. They cleaned the teeth, put glue on the teeth that had attachments and then put the alignment in my mouth (I was just going by feel but I assume the aligner had the attachments on the inside of it and that was how they got them in the right position). That part was fine but when they removed it, they had to polish off all the excess glue. They used a big, metal polisher and the noise and pain was excruciating. I didn't think I had particularly sensitive teeth but I was gripping the arms of the seat to get through it. I really hope none of my aligners fall off as I really don't want to go through that again!
After that, they put my first aligner in for me. Apparently it was hard to get in as the woman was quite rough with my mouth and ended up splitting the skin at the edge of my lip. I would have preferred if they let me try to put it in myself. I think I could have managed. They gave me my invisalign kit and told me to read over it for details. I wasn't given too much information, maybe because my appointment went 40 mins over and they were pushed for time, but luckily I'd already done my own research. One odd thing they did tell me was that I should leave the aligners in when I ate for the first day. They didn't give me any instructions about food I shouldn't eat.
It was lunchtime when I got back from work so I decided to get my usual, udon soup. As instructed, I left the aligner in but when I checked my teeth after eating, there were bits of red and green from the soup inside the aligner. I couldn't leave it like that so I ended up taking the aligner out, rinsing it and then putting it back in. I had a pretty easy time taking it out and putting it back in again. It was a little painful but nothing too bad. The first day was fine, no pain. I ended up taking it out for dinner since I'd had such an easy time earlier and that was also fine.
I have a very obvious lisp so I pretty much tell everyone that I talk to at work that I just got invisalign braces. People are surprised as they can't tell from looking. The most they can see is that my teeth look shiny, but even that is only if they get very close. That's good news. People reassure me that the lisp will go away with time but I'm not so sure.
Day two, the dull pain was constant and very distracting. I took a neurofen and that did help. I also noticed that the aligner was scratching against my gums. I decided to tough it out but by the end of the day and after two days of rubbing, I had a sore line across my gums. My husband told me off for toughing it out since he said once it's an open wound, it can cause worse problems. Acknowledging that he had a point, I decided to take the aligner out and file it down that evening.
I haven't found eating too hard so far. I've been skipping breakfast because I just don't have the time to do the whole cleaning ritual. I also usually have a snack mid morning and afternoon so that's out now too. I'm starving by lunchtime so I keep eating a massive lunch to make up for it. I know some people lose weight on the 'invisalign diet' but I'm not sure I will as I'm so hungry by the time I take my aligner out, I engulf my food. So far I've been taking about 30 mins for lunch so I can relax in the evening and have it out for a whole 1 1/2 hours which is nice. Every time it comes out it costs me 10 mins in cleaning my teeth time so I try to limit how many times I take it out.
Day three and this is the sweet relief day. The aligner is no longer so tight so I'm not getting a constant pain from wearing it, and since I filed the bottom, it's no longer scratching my teeth and the cut from the past couple of days is starting to heal. No issues today.
Day four and I realise that the aligner is now cutting into a different part of my gum. I'm at work and I don't have a nail file so I (probably stupidly) ignore it again. I'm a bit worried that if I keep this habit up I'll file half the aligner away and it'll keep digging into a different part of the gum each time, so I'm not really sure what to do. This was a tough day for food too because it's a Friday and we usually go out to eat at lunch and then have beers and snacks after work. We got out for lunch and it's fine. I go to the restaurant bathroom to take my aligner out. I'm really fast at taking it in and out now so it only takes a few minutes. Lunch takes a little longer than usual and I wait until I'm back at work to go through the whole ritual clean and floss in the bathroom, so today I lost about 50 minutes to lunch. After work I take out my aligner and drink a beer and eat popcorn with my workmates. After about 30 mins of socialising and munching I realise I have to stop now and put my aligner in or I won't have enough time left for dinner. I seriously contemplate having a popcorn/beer dinner before realising that I'm an adult and that means being responsible.
Day five and six - it's the weekend now and I've had a quiet, chill at home weekend. Usually when I stay at home I'll play video games and snack, so this time I've been playing video games and not snacking. I've been drinking water instead but it's not the same. I haven't been distracted enough to skip breakfast like I do on work days so I've been losing 20-30 mins of my 2 hours to that. This is the first time I've really felt hungry/had cravings and it's been tough. I like to snack so usually I'll eat lots of low calorie food throughout the day (grapes, carrots, salad etc). I'm vegetarian so that might be part of the reason why I eat more, lower calorie meals. My meals tend to be less calorie dense than a meat eater's. Yesterday I must have had too light a lunch because I was starving by 3pm and couldn't last any longer. I ended up blending a fruit smoothie, setting it up and making it a race to take my aligners out, drink it, brush, floss and put them back in so I didn't lose too much time. I think with dinner I ended up going about 20 mins over my 2 hours. Hopefully one day won't make too much of a difference. I find I'm having to choose my meals much more carefully now to make sure it's going to last me until my next one. I think part of it is also just that my body needs to adjust since it's used to me providing it with regular snacks.
The aligner is still rubbing raw one spot on my gums. I'm really not sure what to do since I think if I keep filing it, I might file too much away from the aligner. Since I've been at home all weekend, I've just been putting some tissue paper in between the aligner and the gums and that's been helping, but it's not a permanent solution. I'll probably try to file it again tonight. My orthodontist's system is to have us wear each aligner for only a week before switching to the new one, which I'm really happy about because it means I only have a couple more days with this one. I'm quite excited about switching to aligner 2 as it'll make me feel like I've made progress.
On another note, my lisp still hasn't gone away. It feels very liberating when I remove my aligners and can talk to people normally.