More Than I Bargained for and a Shoddy Result

It's been many months now and although some things have subsided, I can't say I'm thrilled with Invisalign at all. I've never had braces so I don't have that to compare it against.

There's a lot of pros and cons and I mainly want to highlight some that were unexpected for me, but I agree with some of the usual complaints: not told about attachments before signing up, not told I could only drink water in them, not told about IPR. Wearing the trays was a very uncomfortable experience the first few months and cause alot of jaw pain and psychological distress because I could not close my teeth - the trays wound up propping one side of my mouth more open than the other side as a tooth was moved out of crossbite. I had no warning of this whatsoever. It was modeled in the simulation as one tooth magically moving right through another tooth for the movement which extended over many months - the simulation did not reveal what that would really constitute in my mouth with the aligners on. It was a really vexing period of time where I could not open my mouth much because people were staring. After all my teeth didn't meet in front and it looked like I had a severe open bite. Now that that has mostly passed, I still can't close my teeth comfortably with the aligners in and I'm conscious of biting plastic. I can't really smile well either. I flash a smile but certainly can't pose a smile for pictures.

One of the ongoing difficulties I'm having is that I'm getting sick alot. I mean more than ever before and despite washing/sterilizing my hands and cleaning the trays whenever I can. I know the source is my mouth because it starts with a sore throat or laryngitis type symptoms. Having multiple colds this year already has been fairly awful and dealing with these things during a cold just makes it that much worse. I only recently figured out that the trays are the source of my newfound sickiness.