Exhibit A: Selfie in early morning sun at Safeco field for the Seahawks Superbowl Parade
Exhibit B: Sunshiny selfie a year later, I must like taking selfies when I'm outside on a sunny winter day. It's infectious.
My front teeth have been slipping over the top of each other bit by bit the last few years. That's what they did when I was 9 only much much worse. But they're not that bad at the right angle.
Exhibit C: The real before in 1993. Never want to go back to this.
Exhibit D: The reason I hate flossing. My accordion bottom teeth.
It took a month after I said yes in December before my dentist had an appointment for me to come in for my initial molds and pictures. They had Christmas/New Years off and right after everyone wants to use their benefits in the new year naturally.
I was no stranger to getting impressions of my mouth done. I had them in 1993 for my bite plate and retainer, I had them in 2007 for my night guard, and in 2012 for my new night guard. They put a bunch of expanding putty in a tray that tastes how I imagine window caulking tastes and stick it over your teeth and let the putty expand all around your mouth. Invisalign requires special putty to get every minute detail of your teeth so it had a 5 minute setting time per impression. They also have to be absolutely perfect with no bubbles or you have to do it again. Thankfully my Dental Assistant BFF is super pro at impressions, and got to practice on the receptionist before I came in. The receptionist is also starting her treatment, yay an Invisalign twinsie! Probably what hurt the most was taking all the pictures of my teeth. First a few mug shots so they can see if you have any facial structure changes, and then tons of pictures with a DSLR all up in your mouth. It never occurred to me how they take a picture of the under side of your top teeth, until I had cheek spreaders (that sounds awful) and a mirror shoved in my mouth. But I have hot steamy breath (woo!) and kept fogging the mirror even though it was soaking in warm water between pictures. Finally my dentist came over and with 3 pairs of hands we yanked my cheeks around and got the mirror just right and someone took a picture. My face felt like over stretched Silly Putty. After all this I was on my merry way. I took the afternoon off thinking it was a 2 hour adventure, it wasn't. So I got to go shopping at my favorite Target. We'll just say it was a shopping mental health day for the rest of the afternoon. :)
They told me it would be 6-8 weeks for the whole program to finish. My impressions would have to be mailed to Invisalign. They scan them in the computer and their software does an initial pass at a treatment plan. The dentist can then go back and forth and tweak it as much as she needs, and then a final approval would have the trays made. According to the packages they're made in Mexico. They actually look 3D printed which is pretty cool. Maybe I can have one of the parts shops at work print me a spare tray if I ever lose one!
Finally 2 months later my trays came in. I was nervous in the waiting room. I didn't know anything about my treatment time. I had watched so many YouTube videos that my suggested videos feed is all bizarre dental/orthodontic related videos. My BFF (seriously I have to figure out her name!) came up front to get me and asked if I was excited. I said yes, but also a bit nervous. She asked if the dentist or receptionist had told me how many trays I had. No.... She says, well when both sets of trays came in for me and the receptionist, they were really surprised. My stomach is sinking at this point. I've seen people on YouTube with 2 year treatments. I was hoping for 1 year or less, no more than 25 trays. She goes on, well Receptionist only has 24 trays so about a year, do you want to know? Yes. *gulp* You have 35. That's like over a year and a half... OMG. I wanted to run away. 35?! How could it be? I had braces when I was a kid. Look at those jacked up teeth when I was 9, how could they need another year and a half?? Oh man. I took a deep breath and got my big girl pants back on and headed back to the chair with the best view.
Turns out, not only is my treatment 35 trays long, I also have to have 14 attachments. They're little tooth colored globs of the material they make tooth colored fillings out of. They have specific shapes to help certain teeth move in specific directions and help hold the trays on. A few of my teeth have two attachments on them. I have no idea what exactly each one is doing in my mouth. I did figure out they glow under a black light!
It took a little bit to get all those suckers on my teeth. They're done in 4 sections with mini trays that fit over the teeth. My BFF filled them with the glue (for lack of a better word) and put the tray on and cured each bump with a light. That didn't hurt. What hurt was when she had to scrape off some excess that gooped around the tooth.
Finally the dentist came over and she explained that I would have IPR. Interproximal Reduction. They file down the sides of some teeth to make a small gap. Kind of like when you get a filling and they have to smooth the sides between the teeth. It felt like she was taking a metal nail file between my teeth! Thankfully I only had 2 spots. She smoothed them out with what looked like Dremel tool with a mini disk sander. But the bonus is that I pointed out a filling that was a little rough and always snapped my floss so she smoothed that out too. It was weird when she used the sander disk, lots of dust came up out of my mouth and it smelled odd, kinda like a nail salon really.
After all this we finally popped in the trays. They felt odd. Shiny and smooth. The chewing surfaces of my teeth almost feel bouncy since the points are all rounded. My bottom jaw slid a little forward into position. I have a tendency to clench it a little backwards out of place and I suspect that's why I get a lot of tension headaches. But I was good to go and at the advice of the receptionist who started the week before, they told me to wait to put them in until I was ready to go to bed. And to take Advil at the same time. Check.
So that night I popped in tray 1 and felt super naked going to bed without my super thick in comparison night guard. Invisalign here we go.
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