Welcome to my Invisalign Journey!

Welcome to my Invisalign Journey!

Today starts my first day of Invisalign! Yay!

A little back story first....

I'm Caitlin, and I'm 26 years old (well, I will be next Friday). I currently work as a receptionist and massage therapist, so I keep pretty busy. I live in NJ, and am stressed planning a wedding and figuring out my future with my med school student fiance. I never had braces when I was younger. I always wanted them, but they were never in the family budget. So I figured I'd always have these teeth. Low and behold, things changed and I was able to get them... when I'm 26.

I didn't want to have the metal braces - I'm not a kid anymore and I don't care about changing those colored rings. The clear braces they have for adults are nice, but they still have that metal wire going across that you can see. And... I can't imagine giving up those foods anymore! So Invisalign was the right choice for me.

Pre Day One

I had a consultation with my orthodontist, where he took photos, pan and ceph x-rays, and did an exam of my teeth and bite. In my case, I have a Class I bite with crowding and a protruding tooth, so I'm a candidate for Invisalign. Yay!

After all the paperwork, I was to get impressions. The normal impressions they do are quick and easy - 5 mins tops and you're done. For Invisalign, they have to be perfect. You have to make a simple mold in the tray first - just to make sure the tray lines up right. Afterwards, you have to sit for 3 minutes in both the top and bottom trays with this blob of goop. After the 3 minutes, the orthodontist has to pull it out of your mouth - I felt like he was going to pull my teeth out that's how hard it got! 

The impressions are shipped by UPS out to California for their machines to scan and prepare a treatment plan for you. The doctor goes over it and makes sure it works fine and then Invisalign prints out your trays and sends them back to you!

Day ONE

So today was my first day. I knew I had to get attachments - they are tooth colored things that attach to your mouth and hold the aligners in place and help with moving the teeth in the right direction. They give more of a force to a tooth that needs to turn or rotate that only the aligners couldn't do perfectly. He puts the attachments on with a little glue, and then has a set of aligners with composite in the area of the attachment points, and they just harden on like if you were getting a filling done.

I also found out I had to get IPR done. That was not a fun experience. At all. I had to have 4 spaces altered. For the first 3, the orthodontist took a drill with a big flat circle and "sanded" between the teeth. It is a lot of vibration and shook my head for sure.  The point of the sanding is so there is a little more room for the teeth move - either by rotating or front to back. He had to get very close to the gum line to make sure the contact points are all in line with each other. This made the fun even better - my mouth looked like a massacre. So much blood. It didn't hurt, but it was a very uncomfortable experience. The problem I'm finding now is I have 3 noticeable gaps that food keeps getting trapped in, so I carry around floss picks.

So after all that, I now have the aligners in.

It's been a pretty painful/uncomfortable day. The aligners are a tight annoying feeling on your teeth, and I'm ready to take them off. I've been taking Tylenol religiously today - it is just a really annoying feeling - there's no other word for it.

The gums are also very irritated - both from the attachments when the aligners are off and I'm eating, and from the edges of the aligners rubbing. Same things with under my tongue - it's all scraped up. It doesn't help that I keep playing with the aligner too :)

I'm having difficulty with images today - so I'll figure that out and do a separate post with that.

Thanks for joining me on my journey!