I was afraid of this.
The first 28 days (2 Trays) were quite enjoyable. No pain. Little Hassle. Minimal disruption to normal life.
Then Tray #3 decided to ruin my life.
Two days ago I was back at the orthodontists office for my check-up, which, much to my dismay also included the addition of twenty-four more attachments to my teeth. Up to that point, I had already had twenty-four of them bonded to the outside of my teeth to help hold the trays on snugly and assist in properly moving the teeth. This time, I had them bonded to the backside of the teeth too.
The ones on the outside, while obnoxious at first, ended up only being a slight annoyance once I had some time to get acclimated to them. They’ve caused a couple of canker sores over the past month, but I’ve had canker sores in the past and, while not ideal, a canker sore is nothing to lose one’s mind over.
The new attachments on the backsides of my teeth are, so far, a completely different story. They are causing a lot of pain and aggravation to my tongue, to the point where it’s actually painful to eat. It’s like having sandpaper rubbed over the edges of your tongue all day long. The closest real life experience, since I assume having sandpaper rubbed all over your tongue isn’t a real life experience for most people, that I can equate it to are those tongue pimple things.
You know, those little bumps you will sometimes get on the tip of your tongue when a taste bud gets inflamed or whatever the hell it is that causes those things. I feel like I would normally get them after eating an excessive amount of highly sweet/sour foods.
So, imagine having those incredibly painful tongue pimples up and down both sides of your tongue where it touches the sides of your teeth, only without the physical bump. Just the pain. And every time you move your mouth or tongue even the slightest bit, that tongue pimple gets rubbed right up against a bracket that has been bonded to your teeth.
Yeah, it’s not fun.
I got used to the ones on the outside of the teeth though. I’m just praying that my body adapts to these new ones as well and the pain goes away. And soon.
Another bad side effect of the additional attachments on the teeth is that removing the trays has suddenly become much more difficult. The attachments give the trays something to lock onto, and it was tricky enough learning how to “unlock” the trays with attachments just on the outside. I did, after a few days, develop a method that seemed to work well and as the days went on, it got easier and easier to do. But after the dentist bonded the new attachments to my teeth, even she had quite a bit of trouble getting the aligners off.
Before I left the office that day, she told me she wanted me to take them off before I left as a practice run just to make sure I could do it. Half hour later, I was still sitting there and had completely given up.
Over the past two days, I’ve started to figure out techniques that have made it a teensy bit easier to remove them, but it’s still not without some hassle. All the pushing and pulling along the thin edge of hard plastic has torn the nerve endings in my finger tips to shreds to the point where it only now is no longer painful to even type. And my fingernails caused my gums to bleed during the struggles a few times.
Today I was actually able to get the entire removal of both aligners down to under two minutes, which was a shock. Nowhere near the fifteen or twenty seconds I had mastered when I only had the attachments on the outside, but a vast improvement over thirty minutes.
And my third problem with this third set of aligners is that the top left molar doesn’t fit snugly into the aligners. It’s just a tad bit loose. It’s mostly just an annoyance as every time I bite down, I can feel it move, but also I’m a bit concerned that if my tooth doesn’t fit properly into it, then it won’t properly move my tooth and none of my following aligners will fit properly either. I’ve done a little bit looking into it online and some other people have mentioned they have had this problem too, but after a period of time, their tooth moves into position and the aligner then fits snugly. So, I’m gonna give it another day or so and if I haven’t seen a change in the fit, I’ll give the ortho a call and see what he says.
So, obviously, my honeymoon period with Invisalign is over and now I’m in for the long haul. I’m doing my best to maintain faith that this is all going to be worth it in the end and that it’s all an adjustment process and things will only get better.
Because if it doesn’t, I may just pay someone to punch me really hard and just knock my teeth out.