Trays 1-3 were honestly pretty unremarkable. It was fairly easy to get used to them. Since I've been sleeping with a night guard for 8 years I'm used to the whole plastic in the mouth deal. Plus I was pretty decent at talking in my night guard so adjusting to the Invisalign wasn't too tough. Coworkers didn't notice or really say anything. Most had forgotten I even got them and offered me coffee and treats. My favorite comment from the significant was "hey you're not lisping nearly as bad as I imagined!" Thanks. I'll keep that in mind later punk.
The hardest thing to get used to was the whole teeth brushing program. Invisalign has to come out for everything except drinking water. If you take it out to eat or drink non-water, you have to brush and floss before putting it back. If you don't the sugar/food will be trapped in your teeth until the next time you take off the trays, hello cavity city. I really had to use a mirror every time I wanted to take them out for probably the first 3 weeks. Negotiating around my canine attachments is pretty tough. The office wasn't too bad the bathroom is fairly close to my desk and people eventually stopped looking at me funny with my electric toothbrush in the office bathroom. My first lunch outing was with my bestie and honorary sister since junior high. No one better to have a long Invisalign lunch with. I was chewing much more slowly because my back teeth stopped touching! I couldn't quite chew the seaweed in the sushi we ate. She went through braces in high school, nothing needed to be said. The bathroom at the sushi restaurant only had one sink and it was super awkward when someone else came in. Pro Tip: Nordstrom Bathroom. Now if I go out to eat and I'm going straight home, I swish really vigorously with water and put my trays back in and brush at home.
Eating has had a few issues, but no surprises really. The biggest surprise was my back molars not touching which makes soft vegetables and leafy vegetables hard to eat because they're thinner than the space between my molars to chomp on. I had a Kind bar from the cafeteria and had sore teeth for the rest of the day after doing that. The almonds were just too dang hard! I'll probably avoid hard nuts like almonds unless I'm close to the end of the 2 weeks in a tray. My teeth feel more stable and less likely to get sore in the 2nd week of a tray and things like steak and sesame snaps haven't been a problem.
I've been experimenting with lots of cleaners for the trays. Sonicare and toothpaste for most of tray 1. I didn't get any stinky smells like a lot of people mention, but there were quite a few white spots on the trays. Tray 2 I tried OAP Cleaner, it was nice, but if it wasn't rinsed off all the way I started getting a canker sore on my tonsil. I immediately realized it must have sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in it. It foams up nicely and kept my tray from turning white in spots so I would keep going with it if it wasn't for the SLS. At this point I ordered a $40 ultra sonic denture cleaner machine on Amazon. I used one cycle of that to rinse off the OAP and it seemed to be ok. By Tray 3 I found something called Kleenite at my local drugstore, it's a powder that you put in water and soak the trays for a little while. It didn't turn the trays colors or anything but also had SLS so I put it in the ultrasonic too. I also ordered DentaSoak so that I can sanitize while I'm eating a meal and ultrasonic them while I'm brushing. I'll probably keep doing some combo of Kleenite and DentaSoak. Kleenite would be easier for travel, no chance of spilling.
The only snafu I had during tray 1 was the fact that I knocked of two attachments!! One of them I think came off when I popped a tray on after lunch on the first day I wore them at work. I felt something in the back of my mouth like I hadn't brushed out a food bit and swipd it out with my finger and wiped it on a napkin. I didn't think to look to check that it wasn't food. It was probably my attachment. Because my dentist is closed Friday's and I didn't notice until 8pm Thursday I was stuck until Monday. It was fine and they got me in that afternoon. Until the next Monday, I was getting cocky on day 12 of my first tray thinking I could get it off one handed. I snapped off half of one of my largest attachments on my canine. Called the dentist ASAP and they got me in Tuesday afternoon. Since then I've been pretty careful as I remove them around all my attachments. I think I've got a system down now and I can almost do it without looking in a mirror or reflection, but I do need to look when it's a fresh tray and it's really snug.
Overall, it hasn't been too bad. Planning the brushing after eating has been kind of annoying. I went to Ikea and wanted to have meatballs but when I walked in the women's room to take out my trays it was just too gross and smelly to even want to consider having to brush there after eating. The store was just too busy. The other thing I miss is sipping my coffee all morning from my thermal mug and sipping beers on weekend evenings watching movies. I really like sampling micro brews. Though I joked with the dentist about drinking a beer through a straw and she said why not! Just rinse good! So maybe I'll try that out this weekend.
Friday, April 24, 2015
The Before and Getting to Tray 1
I dug around and found a few of the pictures that bothered me. Usually they're pictures other people take so naturally I don't save those off of Facebook, but these are a few of the candid selfies that kinda nudged me to start thinking about this again. They aren't kidding, the selfie culture is certainly driving cosmetic procedures. Though I'm starting to wonder if fixing my teeth is going to help my bite and make me stop grinding my teeth at night. I actually can't grind my teeth with the Invisalign on. Without further ado:
Exhibit A: Selfie in early morning sun at Safeco field for the Seahawks Superbowl Parade
Thanks frigid February sunshine for highlighting the flaws that I was trying to ignore.
Exhibit B: Sunshiny selfie a year later, I must like taking selfies when I'm outside on a sunny winter day. It's infectious.
Thanks childhood dentist for telling my mom to fix things early!
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!
I'm holding my LED manicure lamp up to my face. I'll really want to go cosmic bowling now.
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.
It's pretty invisible, but you can see my attachments and my teeth look abnormally shiny.
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.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
The Very Beginning: Finaly Going For It!
I finally made the decision to finish straightening my teeth this year. I figured after all the blogs and videos I watched about the experiences of others, I wanted to add my experience with Invisalign out there too. I had a half set of braces and head gear when I was 9 years old to help expand my jaw while it was growing and make room for my adult teeth and avoid any future extractions. After a year I was given a temporary retainer, two years later they took it away and said I was done until I was a teenager and had all my adult teeth. They told my mom to bring me back for a full set of braces top and bottom when I was in high school. Well, we already used up the insurance allowance for my first treatment and my mom said that I could get my full set when I was a grown up with my own insurance. Like a 12 year old can grasp that! Things looked pretty good back then, though a few teeth that came in later didn't really come in right. High school came and went, I was grateful I didn't have to suffer puberty with extractions and braces like all my peers. I was an avid oboe player, I did not want to complicate the success I was having with braces!
In the last few years as I have joined the working world and as 30 approached I was always jealous of my peers with those perfect Hollywood pearly whites. Everyone these days is obsessed with perfect white teeth. I get more and more self conscious of my bottom teeth that make kind of a zig zag pattern feeling like they're going to rip out with floss, and my canines that point forward and leave a small gap on the side that at the wrong angle in the wrong light when I'm smiling looks like I'm missing teeth. Don't you love it how friends put the most unflattering pictures online? They probably don't even notice it, but it's just one of those little nagging things. I always joked that I was never into the idea of plastic surgery, but I would consider straightening my teeth. I would talk myself out of the idea by looking at celebrities that have that one little off tooth as kind of a signature. But even they are starting to fix those little signature flaws with all the new tech in orthodontics.
In late 2010 I got a consultation at an ortho in the same building as my previous dentist. Thought maybe it would be a really easy case. They wanted to put me in 2 years of brackets for $6-7k or a combo of brackets and Invisalign for $8k+! I didn't have ortho coverage at my first job out of college and felt too self conscious with the idea of being a consultant only a few years out of college and showing up at the client with a mouth full of braces. I didn't think clients would take me seriously. In all honestly most of our clients were educators and many in special education and were the sweetest people, they probably would have loved it. But again, that whole self conscious thing. I shelved the idea.
Then this past winter, I was at my regular cleaning with my new dentist. I was joking they should make me a neon green night guard like Russel Wilson's QB mouth guard. The Seahawks were heating up in December, it was awesome. Sadly the dentist said night guards only came in clear acrylic. I protested and said retainers came in rainbows of colors! Everyone laughed and reminisced on what color their retainer was, the assitant had one with a flower and mentioned she still had it. I said mine was taken away until I came back for a 2nd round of braces... which I never had. The dentist put the chair back down and said "Let me see something." We went through the whole bite down, check, bite down, check routine all around my mouth. Oh yeah you know I do Invisalign here right? This would be a super easy case your bite is all lined up! Those upper canines might not get exactly perfect but we can certainly get all this straightened up much nicer for you! I'll have the receptionist write you up a quote and you can think about it. You've got really good coverage better than [Insert 2 very major employers]! Color me surprised. I forgot my new job had coverage.
The quote was close to $5k, with my insurance covering $2k and the rest could be divided up over a year to a credit card of my choice (hello airline miles!). Needless to say I went home and watched hours of videos on YouTube about Invisalign with before and after pictures and decided the payments wouldn't be too bad. Called the next morning and said YES! LET'S DO THIS!
In the last few years as I have joined the working world and as 30 approached I was always jealous of my peers with those perfect Hollywood pearly whites. Everyone these days is obsessed with perfect white teeth. I get more and more self conscious of my bottom teeth that make kind of a zig zag pattern feeling like they're going to rip out with floss, and my canines that point forward and leave a small gap on the side that at the wrong angle in the wrong light when I'm smiling looks like I'm missing teeth. Don't you love it how friends put the most unflattering pictures online? They probably don't even notice it, but it's just one of those little nagging things. I always joked that I was never into the idea of plastic surgery, but I would consider straightening my teeth. I would talk myself out of the idea by looking at celebrities that have that one little off tooth as kind of a signature. But even they are starting to fix those little signature flaws with all the new tech in orthodontics.
In late 2010 I got a consultation at an ortho in the same building as my previous dentist. Thought maybe it would be a really easy case. They wanted to put me in 2 years of brackets for $6-7k or a combo of brackets and Invisalign for $8k+! I didn't have ortho coverage at my first job out of college and felt too self conscious with the idea of being a consultant only a few years out of college and showing up at the client with a mouth full of braces. I didn't think clients would take me seriously. In all honestly most of our clients were educators and many in special education and were the sweetest people, they probably would have loved it. But again, that whole self conscious thing. I shelved the idea.
Then this past winter, I was at my regular cleaning with my new dentist. I was joking they should make me a neon green night guard like Russel Wilson's QB mouth guard. The Seahawks were heating up in December, it was awesome. Sadly the dentist said night guards only came in clear acrylic. I protested and said retainers came in rainbows of colors! Everyone laughed and reminisced on what color their retainer was, the assitant had one with a flower and mentioned she still had it. I said mine was taken away until I came back for a 2nd round of braces... which I never had. The dentist put the chair back down and said "Let me see something." We went through the whole bite down, check, bite down, check routine all around my mouth. Oh yeah you know I do Invisalign here right? This would be a super easy case your bite is all lined up! Those upper canines might not get exactly perfect but we can certainly get all this straightened up much nicer for you! I'll have the receptionist write you up a quote and you can think about it. You've got really good coverage better than [Insert 2 very major employers]! Color me surprised. I forgot my new job had coverage.
The quote was close to $5k, with my insurance covering $2k and the rest could be divided up over a year to a credit card of my choice (hello airline miles!). Needless to say I went home and watched hours of videos on YouTube about Invisalign with before and after pictures and decided the payments wouldn't be too bad. Called the next morning and said YES! LET'S DO THIS!
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