30 Yrs Old and Now Is The Time For Perfect Teeth - Toronto, ON

It has literally only been 24 hrs since I put my 1st tray in. My mouth is decorated with sores. I have blisters on both back sides of my tongue, on the tip of my tongue, and a red raw patch on the underside where it scrapes against the lower tray. There are also blisters on both sides of my top cheeks as well as both sides of my bottom cheeks. I'm pretty much just sitting here with my mouth slightly open and my tongue still. Such fun! I have a nail file which I tried to use to shave all the sharp edges but it's too wide and pretty much everywhere on these trays feel like glass to my mouth so I don't know where to even shave without going wild. I've bought one of those long thin emery boards online and will attack as soon as I receive it. In the meantime I suffer in silence.

It's not so bad actually. I don't have any buttons on my teeth yet and nothing was shaved so my aligners are just the starter sets, I'm sure. I go back after my 2nd tray for the real experience. My teeth itself just has a dull ache. When I took them out for the first time yesterday they hurt so very much, but I'd taken pain killers in anticipation and so the ache didn't last very long. Today, the ache is better still. Popping out the trays is very hard for me. I know that once I get the buttons it will become twice as difficult and I can only imagine how much I will struggle. Hopefully, after a month of these 'trainer' pairs, I'll figure out some tricks to getting them off that will work with the attachments.

Meanwhile I eat only soft food. Chewing is nearly unbearable with all the sores and my teeth ache while the aligners are out and are like little rocks banging into each other as if they don't know where they're supposed to be any more. For breakfast I've had tea, but otherwise I'm only drinking water. I am a coffee drinker as well but the dental hygienist I asked, said I can't use whiteners only whitening toothpaste even though my buttons aren't even on yet! Still, I imagine it's better to be safe. For now I watch the clock and am anxious not to keep them out too long. In the past 24+ hrs I've had them in for the require 22 hrs. I hope I don't get too lazy on this.

It's only been 1 day, when I speak I speak with an obvious lisp, and my mouth hurts too much to even try speaking anyway, but I'm actually content. I knew all about the sores and the aches so I've been mentally prepared. I'm being brave and will toughen it out. If not, there is always ambesol and pain-killers. Hopefully the sores heal quickly because really they're my only concern. The dull ache in my teeth is nothing to me. I'm preparing myself for the expected pain of having them in with the attachments. I have 34 trays in total and I'm changing them every 2 weeks. My whole journey is ahead of me so I'm keeping positive.

I'm looking forward to having great teeth! I'll next update maybe on or after tray #2.

So after the first two days of enduring a mouth full of scratches, I decided that I could wait for my online delivery no more. I popped in to a dollar store and purchased a pack of varying sizes of emery boards. When I got home, as soon as it was time for my next meal I made myself a smoothie, drank it down quickly, popped out the trays, rinsed them out thoroughly, and then spent the remainder of my allocated 40 mins filing away to my heart's content. It took about two or three more meals of this whittling away before I was able to comfortably have them in my mouth. Meanwhile warm salt water replaced my mouth wash from day 2 to early day 4. It helped so much! By day 4 I was doing great. No more pain, no more sores, no more trying not to speak or swallow.

My chewie became my best friend for my first week. In my free time, I sat slowly chewing on it for minutes at a time. I love the slight ache it causes and it makes the trays feel so tight and snug that I'm confident it's doing it's job. I was told that it's important to use the chewie on the first three or four days just to make sure that the trays are snug. I did have a tiny scare on around day 7 when I bit down with my front teeth and felt double to ache. Even though it wasn't awful pain, I thought I definitely hurt the tooth and went to the mirror to inspect. The pain went away after a few minutes but my anxiety now won't let me chew on my chewie like I use to. The first three days is allocated to chewie chewing and then no more!

So what did I eat? Well, no you didn't read what I previous wrote, wrong. I drank smoothies. Bless the person who recommended drinking smoothies with the trays in. I save so much time that way! I'm usually a pretty fast eater anyway. Meals take me around 10 mins to eat and then I pop up and immediately begin my teeth brushing ritual. Flossing, brushing (electric), mouthwash, tray brushing (toothpaste), and then trays back in after breakfast and dinner. Flossing, brushing (regular), and tray brushing after lunch. The ritual takes around 10 mins. So on average my breakfast and dinner routine are 20 mins each and for lunch when I have my smoothie it's down to around 10 mins. This means that during the week I have my trays out for only about 1 hr each day! Snacking went down to 0 and I lost 2 lbs after my first week.

I can't say I actually recommend this style of eating-quickly-then-brushing. After 10 days of this I became very sad. I never get to savour food anymore. If I've eaten something delicious, it's barely cleared the back of my throat before I'm drowning it in minty fresh goodness. I was so rigid on my time that my eyes were always on the clock counting down minutes. Day 11 to 14 saw me relaxing and not always so quick to get to the teeth-brushing. Forty minutes is the allotted time for my meals so I slowed down to around 22 - 22.5 hrs instead of 23. On the weekend I looked at the clock when I took them out and then looked at the clock when I had them back in, and that's it! No panic.

TRAY 2 slid into place last night, rather nicely. In my first 14 days of this invisalign journey I learned so very much. I know what to eat and drink with (smoothie, water) and without (all other food and hot drinks) the trays in, I have it down to an art popping the trays in and out that I can do it in seconds with one hand (simple trays, no attachments!), and I have my teeth-brushing routine down perfectly. Yesterday I spent my breakfast time filing this tray 2 down so that by the time I popped them in last night, I had no pain. This morning I can tell it'll need a bit more fine tuning, but compared to last tray I'm feeling like I'm ahead this time.

I've only had tray 2 in for about 12 hours now. I'll see how the rest of the two weeks go. Tray 3 will be so much more exciting. It's IPR and attachments time then!

So, tray 2 passed by pretty uneventfully. Except for a migraine one day that made me seriously consider pulling the trays out and honestly never putting them back in again, I also had my first experience having dinner out at a restaurant. The restaurant trip went surprisingly well. While there, the trays were only out for one and a half hours. I had a light breakfast in the morning where I had the trays out for about 1/2 hour and then nothing for lunch, followed by early dinner at the restaurant. So it worked out well.

I got IPR, attachments, and Tray 3 yesterday afternoon. Having the attachments put on was mild torture. The part that got my anxiety going was the cleanup. That sound and the feeling of having a buffer drilling over my teeth was horrid. In comparison, the IPR was lovely! My ortho used a water drill and except for water spraying everywhere it all happened without any sort of worry. My ortho was impressed by how amazingly my trays fit and she said she could definitely tell I'd been great when it came to my wear time. So today, when my trays are off my teeth feel dirty and nasty, the attachments are sharp, and my teeth ache a little. When the trays are on, my teeth feel less sharp but still strange and bumpy, and they ache a little. I've also had a low level headache since the moment they went in. All in all though, tray 3 seems fine.