The Road to Straight Teeth

Tray No. 15.

Susan has begun to push her way into the spot where the extraction was done. It’s apparent when looking at my gums. If you press on your gums you’ll see they turn pale, the same thing is happening on the section of gum that is in the way of Susan. The gum is also starting to bulge where they use to be sunken in. It is evident where bone was removed for Susan to have an easier time moving into position. The roof of my mouth is solid until I start pressing on the channel that was carved out of the bone. 

I went to the orthodontists a couple of weeks ago to get the rest of my trays and I only have to wear up to tray 21 so that puts me ending my treatment on January 25th considering I don’t need to a third scan done for further refinement. Hopefully I don’t but we’ll see. 

Hello blog readers! I know it’s been so long.

A couple of things to update on:

Susan is moving right along. My front teeth have been moved slightly over so that my bite is crooked. This is so that Susan has enough room to come through without disrupting the other teeth. Once Susan is in place my front teeth will be moved back to have a correct bite.

The tooth that is directly below Susan is being pushed backwards so that Susan doesn’t interfere with it. The same thing will happen like with my front teeth when Susan is in place, the lower tooth will be moved to it’s correct position.

I’m really excited to start seeing Susan come into the arch. It still looks like I’m missing a tooth but it will only get better with time. 

I have the .gif created in Photoshop but the quality it has to be in order to be uploaded to tumblr is poo. I’m going to see if I can save it out as a video so that I don’t have to sacrifice quality. 

I’ve been clinching my jaw again. This could be caused by my weird bite, cold weather or stress. :shrugs:

The pain from my teeth are pretty much limited to just 4 teeth. It’s really not that bad anymore. It takes about 3 days for my teeth to take the form of the new trays. 

My front teeth are about a millimeter from each other but it’s kind of not as exciting cause I know they aren’t actually in the correct place. 

So I’ve been struggling with updating the blog BUT, I have been taking pictures and documenting the process. So, not all is lost and now you can catch up on 3 weeks in one sitting.

My teeth are back into the groove of moving again and the trays are hurting far less than tray 2.

I snapped off one of my attachments yesterday. Oops. I go in tomorrow morning to get it put back on. I’m going to have to figure out a way to take off my bottom trays easier. The attachment that broke off is by far the hardest part to take off my trays. Maybe there was too much material for the tray and it was becoming almost impossible to take off ooor, it’s just a bitch to take off. Either way, I may start cutting a slit into the tray by the attachment so it’s easier to take off. Hopefully, the new attachment will be easier to work with and I don’t have to worry about it.

That’s kind of it. There isn’t a lot to update on with words. The pictures should be good enough. :)

Good lord, this tray is not playing any games.

Since Susan is moving, my front teeth are so sensitive. Taking out my trays the next day was comical. I think I ate mac and cheese for 2 days straight. 

I changed tray 2 on Thursday night rather than Wednesday morning. Seemed to work out okay. My teeth were a little clicky a couple of days ago but nothing too ridiculous.

I’ll be changing into Tray 3 tomorrow night so hopefully, I get that blog post turned around sooner than this one. Woops. I’ll also be out of town Wednesday so fun times. 

I signed up for a conference at the end of October, hopefully Susan will be closer to the arch so I don’t have to worry about people thinking I’m missing a tooth. 

Tray No. 1 

Long time no see blog readers!

Today I had my fitting for my second set of trays. It went much quicker than my first fitting.

I got 1 new attachment and 2 attachments needed to be relocated. I have no more rubber bands and the ledge behind my front teeth was removed. It does look like I’m missing a tooth since I no longer have the pontic but in about 8 weeks, Susan should be close enough to the arch that she’s visible. 

I was a little nervous to find out how many trays I would have for the refinement trays. Only 22 trays! That means February 1st my teeth will be straight! It’s crazy to think they quoted me 2-2.5 years of Invisalign and I’m going to end up completing treatment in 1.5 years. Way to go teeth! 

I will be switching update days from Friday to Wednesday. Since I have band on Thursdays I’m going to start switching trays in the morning rather than at night so I get 2 days of adjusting rather than 1 before I play a clarinet for 2 hours. Not sure how that will mess with my blog updating since I had a good rhythm updating before bed. We’ll see how it goes. Switching in the morning will allow me to have time to accurately diagram which teeth are hurting since I’ll have all day to feel the adjustment. 

There isn’t a whole bunch to update on, it’s pretty much smooth sailing until the end of set. I still change trays every week. I probably won’t be updating the progress of Susan anymore since she’s now one with the tray. It’ll be a matter of just slowly seeing her make an appearance in the weekly photo update. I’m going to continue making .gifs every 7 weeks since I have 22 trays it’ll work out pretty well.  I threw away all of my old trays today. It was strange, I wonder if they’re recyclable? Kind of gross to think my trays will be sitting in a landfill just never (very slowly) decomposing. I’ll Google if they are.