59 Years Old and Ready to DO THIS! - Springfield, VA

It's been quite some time since I've posted, primarily because I've been away on another long trip -- this time two months traveling in Latin America. Being on the road with Invisalign continues to go smoothly, even though this last trip was definitely more at the grungy backpacker level than anything luxurious! No additional travel tips to share, as the routine is about the same no matter what. Although I do thank heaven I am not a very sanitary-obsessed person, so I don't worry about third world conditions too much! :-)

So I went to for a checkup with the orthodontist a few days after my return, and everything is progressing on track (see attached photos). Believe it or not, I'm actually just about done with my first treatment round, and will be going into refinements before I know it! Specifically, I am on Tray 24 of 30 active trays for the bottom. I've actually been in passive trays for the top since Tray 15, so he had me jump to Tray 31 for the top where there a bit of overcorrection starts to happen, so now that will happen concurrently with the remaining movement on the bottom (basically I just skipped over a bunch of additional 'passive' trays). Since I am going away for another five weeks of travel at the end of this month, we will also take the mouth scans just before I leave to order refinement trays at that time, so they will be ready for me when I return from my trip in early December (meanwhile I'll finish up the final trays of the initial treatment round while I'm away).

While everything has been moving according to plan and I see a lot of positive progress and am very happy with the results to date (especially when I look at my photos starting out!), there are definitely some tweaks I want to make to the finished product, so I'm ready to take on one or more refinement phases as necessary.

As for the time involved, of course I'm not sure how many more trays refinements will include, but really this has all gone super fast and has been almost hassle free, so I don't mind continuing. In fact, I'll only have been doing this treatment for 8.5 months by the time I get the refinement trays in December, so can't imagine that the whole process will endure for more than a year and a half total -- including one or more rounds of refinement (which is kind of what I had mentally prepared myself for based on things I had read before starting). And in the refinement phase, since needed movements are not likely to be as dramatic, I probably will shorten the time between trays compared to what I've been doing now (I have Acceledent, but have been keeping trays in for 8 days each -- although I know I could easily be doing 7 or less.....). So that will speed it up, too.

So that's the latest from here!! I hope everyone else has been having a positive experience with Invisalign. I'll post again once I find out more about the refinement phase.....

Well, I’m back from my six weeks of overland travel in Africa, and getting ready to leave for another 2 months away to Latin America. Everything went just fine during the Africa trip, and I have no additional travel tips to provide beyond what I’ve already said about the cruising!

Even though travel in developing countries is much more “rustic,” I’ve concluded it’s basically the same routine no matter where you are. I will say that due to long days of driving/travel and outdoor activities, etc. I never did a full teeth/tray cleaning at midday, and just did it in the morning and the evening, with a quick mouth swish, sugarless gum, and maybe a quick dry brush at lunchtime. Also, occasionally I used bottled water instead of sink water to do the above-mentioned cleaning, because the water wasn’t considered safe. Finally, because of erratic electricity availability, I made sure to keep the Acceledent charged every night I was able to plug it in. But other than that, Invisalign on the trip was (fortunately) completely uneventful and everything continues to move forward.

One thing that did happen while I was away is that I lost a few small attachments on the lower teeth. I’m not sure what I was doing differently that caused this – but in any case I’m getting them all replaced in a few days, just before I leave on my next trip. I’ll try to be more careful in taking the trays in/out, which I presume is why the attachments came off…..??

I’m using Acceledent, and have decided to keep trays in for 8 days each – basically I’ve just decided this on my own since my orthodontist and his assistants have not ever given me a definitive recommendation about this – they all just say “I’ll know” if I’m moving too fast. Not helpful! Anyway, I’ve decided to err on the side of caution and keep the trays in longer rather than shorter. It seems to be fine as the new trays are never too uncomfortable, and things are moving along as planned….. and hopefully I’m giving enough time for (not visible) bone formation and other important changes to occur.

So I’m on tray 15 now – I see good progress on the movement of teeth, and correction of the particularly twisted upper front teeth (updated photos attached). Although I have many trays to go, the upper teeth are about to go into “passive” state until overcorrection trays start at tray 30. It seems like those upper teeth do need more correction, but am willing to wait it out and see. Between now and then most of the work will be on a particularly rotated lower tooth that requires a lot of movement. In seeing how things are going at this stage, I’m pretty sure I am going to want to go into refinements – like others have said, although I’m not looking for a perfect smile, I have gotten more ‘picky’ about what the final result should look like – especially paying all this money and investing all this time, I may as well get it as good as I can.

Okay, that’s all for this installment – I’ll post more once I get back in a few months!!!

I thought the entire topic of eating on cruises merited its own post, so here are some thoughts on that:
• Cruise eating: As I’d mentioned previously, I have a pretty established routine for eating on cruise ships, and am almost always around sanitary conditions and good bathrooms during meals, so didn’t expect this to be very difficult, and it wasn’t. I don’t eat three meals in the dining room (where you order from a menu and are served by wait staff), so this helped me be efficient about my tray time. The dining room meals by their nature take a much longer time compared with buffets or room service or whatever, where you get everything at once and wolf it down at your own pace. So I typically just have a cappuccino, some croissants, and juice for breakfast, either in my room or in the coffee lounge on the ship. This took about 15 minutes. For lunch, once in a blue moon I would actually have a full meal, but mainly this was a light sandwich or something in the Lido buffet. The trays wouldn’t actually come out until all my food was in front of me, and I could split right after eating to go brush my teeth (either in the cabin or in one of the public bathrooms). Average time was about half an hour or less with the trays out. Finally, the most challenging in terms of timing was dinner in the dining room. There are multiple courses, and sometimes a bit of a wait between the different courses, so it can start to get long. That being said, because I was time efficient for the other meals, I wasn’t usually very anxious about it, because it turns out I generally did have plenty of time. After ordering, I would wait to pop the trays out until the first course was sitting right in front of me before I would touch anything – either the food, or bread and butter, or a sip of wine, or whatever. I would typically never put my trays back in while waiting for the next course because they come out pretty efficiently, except I think I did so once because for some reason there was a big delay before dessert I think…. But generally, I just kept them out the whole time. Following one or two (or – I admit it – sometimes THREE! ?) first courses, the main entrée would arrive. I am a pretty fast eater (as are my family members, so I wasn’t forcing them to hurry), so all this went pretty quickly. Once all this was cleared, we always made time for dessert and/or coffee/tea. Even with all of this, my average time with the trays out was about 75 minutes – sometimes a bit more, but often even less -- and I still don’t think I was under 22 hours a day more than once or twice the entire month away. (And as for the really important question of how it affected my overall eating consumption on the cruise – I’m sorry to say that I didn’t eat less at all – so this isn’t the Invisa-lighter diet plan I had hoped for! ?)
• Day touring: Whenever we’re in port, we typically go out on a day tour of some kind, and usually in a group. Most of the time this presents no issue, because I am not eating or drinking anything. But there are definitely occasions where snacks, the local wine or beer, or some other local food specialty is presented as part of a tour someplace. On those occasions you’re often sitting at a table with other tourists being served. Do I forego the snacks because of the aligners? No! Employing distraction and sleight of hand techniques (see below), I just popped those suckers out, ate, swished and rinsed, and popped the trays back in. If other people around the table noticed me doing this, they didn’t show it
• Tray removal: Re: taking the aligners out in public, this has been no problem for me. I have taken a bit of wisdom from con artists, magicians, and self-help gurus to deal with this! First of all, it’s amazing how easily distracted people are, and how simple it is to find a time when people around you are just not paying attention – because someone else is talking, or they’re looking at a menu, or a tour guide is speaking, or because of a random noise somewhere they turn towards, or because they are focused on their own food. I swear it was rare that anyone was even aware I was taking out the aligners most of the time – I mean it takes less than 10 seconds to do so, you can easily choose to do it when you see that people are looking elsewhere, and it’s over and done before you know it. You’d be amazed at how distracted and/or self-focused most are – and how easy it is to find a few seconds when people are looking elsewhere or doing something else. Second, and related to this, is the old admonishment from pop-psychology books to stop being so self-obsessed and to realize that other people are nowhere near as fixated on watching us as we tend to believe, and simply do NOT CARE what we are doing, nor are they focused on us at all! In short, nobody is really paying attention, and nobody really has an opinion about what’s going on in my mouth anyway!!!!!! So anyway, the bottom line is that I am discreet but not overly self-conscious about popping trays in and out, and frankly, even if people do see me I don’t really care!!
• Travel hygiene go kit: Like most other folks I have a little ‘go kit’ bag which is used not only while traveling, but also just when going out to eat when I’m home as well. As time has gone on, I’ve evolved in what I need to include in the kit. It started out pretty mean and lean, but I’ve added new things especially for traveling away from home. So the current iteration now includes: the Invisalign storage case, a travel sized toothbrush, toothpaste, a few of those individual floss stick things, toothpicks (more to clean out all the nooks and crannies of the aligners than for my teeth), a Wisp, a chewie, a travel sized bottle of mouthwash, a small mirror (to look for all those food particles in my teeth!), a Fresh Guard wipe (an Efferdent product for wiping down dentures, aligners, mouth guards or whatever when you don’t have water), and a few Kleenex (just because!). All of this fits in a little zip pencil case – really quite small (see photo attached last time), that I put into my purse/tote/daypack along with all my other stuff. In addition, I also have a small shoulder bag I bought specifically for this, which is perfect when I’m just going out to eat and nothing more and am not carrying around a bigger bag or purse. It has plenty of space for the go kit materials, and even has a few separate pockets for money, ID, a pen, etc.
• Tray cleaning: I keep trying new routines and ‘equipment’ to see what will work the best. In my bigger set of gear and when I’m at home I have a small plastic container with a lid that I soak the aligners in while I’m eating – but on the cruise I typically only do this in the cabin/hotel bathroom – letting them soak while I’m brushing/flossing. It still seems to work fine. I have noticed now that I have such big indentations in the trays on the inside of the teeth (not filled by attachments, I have to use a toothpick to make sure these areas are clean. Other than that, I just use a small baby toothbrush and (usually) liquid soap to clean them every time.

Okay, sorry for the lengthy posts, but I know I had a lot of questions about traveling with Invisalign when I was thinking about it, so hopefully this will be of interest to others. Meanwhile, I’m headed off on another six week trip to Africa tomorrow, definitely NOT a cruise and not luxurious, so that kind of trip will present much different challenges. I’ll be sure to report back on any further tips I have based on that experience. I also posted an updated photo of tray progress through Tray # 8.