Invisalign Tray 17 and beyond, the end

I am embarrassed it has been so long since my last post. I apologize.

Anyway, My 17 trays of refinements compelted about a month ago. If you've been reading my blog you know the biggest issue I have had is with one canine that is having a hard time completely rotating. It has caused me to have the refinements in the first place and to have some trays crack. My ortho still suggests I get 2 months of metal braces to polish off the rotation of the tooth. I have still resisted. He offered the braces or any other work for free since the Invisalign didn't 100% do the job. He said even if I change my mind in 6 months to just let him know and he'll put in whatever orthodontics free of charge to finish the rotation.

After the final tray the canine was still not perfect. However, it is not too bad. Most people would not realize it. I look light years better than I did when I started. However, the fact that I went a year and 10 months on the treatment is a long time.

On the visit for my 17th tray he took off the buttons on my teeth and gave me a 'retainer' tray which had thicker plastic and no button placement. He said its possible I could still some movement on the canine, which I did, some. He told me to wear the slightly thicker tray 24/7 for a month to stabilize the final position of the teeth. I did this for about a week. I now just wear the trays at night. It has been great having a gap free, button free smile!

Each night I can feel the pressure from the movement from the day. It is clear in my case I will have to continue to wear the trays every night for the foreseeable future. I have an appointment tomorrow where he will give me an even thicker night time set of trays as my final retainer. This might be my last appointment or one of my last.

I one day hope to go back and look through all the posts I've made and make edits as many of the things I said have things that need to be noted in hind sight. A lot of the ways I did the treatment were incorrect. I didn't wear my trays enough. In the first set of trays a tooth fell off track and I kept moving from tray to tray hoping the tooth would 'catch up'. It did not.If a tooth falls out of line stop the treatment, go back to the last tray it fit with and stay on a tray till it moves. If you move to the next tray before the tooth has moved you'll get refinements that will set you back to the time the tooth went off track. In my case this was an extra 10 months for essentially one tooth.

I wish I had just taken an extra 2-3 weeks on the trays early on to make sure the tooth stayed on track with the movement. Also, if your tray cracks due to a stubborn tooth, as in it cracked in a pressure spot, then you need to get it replaced. If it is cracked it is not moving the tooth. If you just move to the next tray you will cause the issue I just discussed.

This will likely be one of my last posts too.. I will try to get final pictures attached but don't anticipate posting much more if at all..

Refinements - Tray 12 of 17 with pictures

I am working through a rather large set of refinements. The refinements were needed because one tooth refused to rotate and drop down as originally planned. This tooth fell off track early in the original and never caught up. As a result I needed 17 refinement trays. Unfortunately, even this set of trays is having a hard time rotating this large well rooted tooth. It is becoming clear to me Invisalign, at least in my experience, does not do a good job of rotating large well rooted teeth. The tooth in question is the canine, #5 tooth on the top. It needs to drop down a little big and rotate probably 80* from when treatment first started to be straight.

The tooth has dropped some and rotated probably 40*-50*. Thats a lot of rotation but there is still a good amount of rotation needed. I am now up to tray 12 and the tooth is again off track. I can see the trays look more rotated than the tooth actually is. I have tried to go slower and leave trays in an extra week if I'm not confident in the progress. Each tray feels tight on the canine so it leads me to believe its moving since a week later the pressure is gone. However, it is clear this is not the case. Each tray is trying to pull down the tooth so there is a small space below the tooth and where it should be. I find myself biting down to push the tray up into place. 

Well, tray 12 was so far off track that the tray started cracking. To those of you that have Invisalign, when your tray cracks.. particularly around where tooth movement is you need to tell your orthodontist immediately. The reality is a crack in your tray is equivalent to a break in your braces. It can mean the tray is no longer moving the tooth because the crack gives it flexibility which means it doesn't have the pressure needed for moving teeth.

Anyhow, I saw my orthodontist and he seems concerned with Invisalign's ability to complete the job when it comes to this tooth. To those of you reading for the first time, I got Invisalign to close the gap between my front teeth and other teeth. Those gaps were all closed very nicely in my first set of trays. The refinements I got were just for this stubborn canine tooth. The ortho suggested a number of options: First, he suggested a setup that involved a metal button and a rubber band under the Invisalign trays to give it the needed torque. Second, he suggested just switching over to metal braces for a couple months to finish out the job. Third, remove the button and replace on the tooth in a spot that the trays could do a better job of grabbing and move to tray 13. This option might not get the tooth all the way to where it needs to but it would be better than pushing on with the tooth and button not close to where the tray suggests it should.

He said it was completely up to me. I told him I hated the idea of metal braces and that in all honesty that I did this to eliminate the gap in my front teeth and with that gone I could potentially 'settle' with wherever the canine ends up. I asked him to order a replacement tray and I am going to revert back to tray 11 until it arrives. It should take about 2 weeks. I am going to try to go back to 11 then back to 12 and try again. I am facing a dilemma though on weather to suck it up for 2 months or so and get metal braces or to just accept the results after the refinements and call it good. To this point I have not paid a dime over the original $5000 amount, but I would think having to get braces would cost some additional money.

Well, that's my current dilemma.

On a side note, if any of you have pets or like funny pictures of animals you should check out http://www.petscaughtintheact.com/

Refinements - Tray 4 of 17 with pictures

    I am on tray 4 of my Invisalign refinement sets. I took some less than perfect pictures with my iPhone to show the new placement of the attachments on my teeth and show another stage in the progress of my teeth. 17 refinement sets seems like a long time, but in the long run it still isn't longer than what braces would have taken. I very much  like that no one recognizes I have these things even with how noticeable they seem to me. 

    My bottom teeth got 5 refinement trays (even though the seemed to move perfectly with the original 7 sets). I believe they are 'over-correcting' the teeth so that when I go days without wearing the trays eventually that the teeth won't move much off track.

    Not much new with the Invisalign. I am used to them, I take them out when I eat, I put them in after I eat. I keep the trays clean, mostly because if you don't they feel gross in your mouth. I am also keeping a much closer eye on the stubborn tooth that still needs rotation. I can tell though that with these refinements it is slowly turning.

    Below are some pics showing where the attachments were placed for refinements as well as showing the progress of the teeth. The gap in my front teeth has been gone for quite some time now thanks to Invisalign. I am used to not having a gap now. If you have the money to do it, Invisalign is definitely worth it. 

    If any readers have any questions I am somewhat running out of interesting things to write about.If you have questions or any topics you think I should make a post about please leave a comment and I will do my best to respond with answers based on my personal experience.

Refinements are in - Tray 1 or 17

Four days ago I got a call saying my refinements were in so I set an appointment for the next day. Once again that was only about 3 weeks for the aligners to arrive. The refinements were largely to fix one tooth that did not rotate properly with the first set of aligners. I could see early on that this tooth was falling off track yet I kept going with the treatment. I strongly recommend if this happens to you to spend an extra two weeks to a month going back a tray and making sure that tooth gets back on track. Here is why.

My refinements have 17 trays. That is 34 weeks. If I had spent the extra time up front to keep that tooth on track this would be dramatically less. Also, there were four trays for the bottom which I thought was odd as my bottom teeth seemed to go perfectly. However, I think this is actually to 'over correct' the bottom teeth so that they hold their form longer when I am not wearing the trays.

Anyway, not only did I find out that the top teeth needed 17 trays to rotate that tooth, I also learned the placement of the new buttons. There were buttons placed on teeth 4 and 5, which tooth 5 is the tooth needing rotating and 4 is the one behind it. (Tooth numbers start with the tooth in your back upper left as #1). That button was expected. What I did not expect was there was a button put on tooth 11 which is on the other side of the mouth mirroring tooth 4. Luckily it is not too much in sight. To put the buttons on the ortho had to put this cleansing liquid on my teeth and let it set for 30 seconds or so, then bonding was applied then a small mini plastic tray that looked like an aligner was put on and held on for a couple minutes while they used a blue light to 'dry' the bonding so the attachments were stuck to my teeth. The ortho then trimmed and shaped a couple of the buttons where too much bonding had been applied.

However the button put on tooth 5, the problematic tooth, was placed in a different spot. It was a bigger button this time and placed toward the bottom front corner of the tooth. I understand why the button needs to be bigger and in that spot, but unfortunately its more noticeable.

I will note it seems like these aligners are made slightly better. They seemed even clearer and the ridges don't cut my tongue. The change in button size represents a better job of rotating teeth. My point is it seems that since I got my first set of aligners 10 months ago that they have improved the program as it shows in the new refinement sets.

So, I will be using Invisalign for another 8 months or so mostly for one tooth. My front teeth no longer have a gap which is great, I feel more confident in my smile in that respect. I feel I can survive another 17 trays as I've been doing for almost a year already and they're are nearly unnoticeable compared to the alternative that is metal braces.

I will also note that I did not have to pay anything for refinements or any of the word done. I literally paid $2,200 up front and my credit card has been charged $200 a month for 14 months ending this March. I never pull out my wallet at any of these ortho visits and there have never been 'extra' charges.

I will put up pictures at some point when I have time.. glad I have so many readers! The number has grown and grown over time. I encourage any new readers to start from the beginning!

Week 22 - final set. Refinements are on the way.

Above is the result of Invisalign after the initial planned trays. As you can see for the most part they turned out very well, however there is the one tooth that did not finish moving. I went to the orthodontist last week to an assessment of the results. I discussed my displeasure with the tooth that had gone off course. I also talked to him about the upside down 'V' my two front teeth had been forming. He actually did some slightly shaving of my front teeth to kind of round and even them out. He also drilled off the gripping buttons to prepare my teeth for a new set of impressions. The process of taking the buttons of is ridiculously easy. It is not painful, no anesthetic or anything needed. He just shaves them off in 2 minutes.

The orthodontist took new moldings of my teeth and pictures of my teeth exactly as he did for the initial impressions 11 months ago. While I had no problems with my bottom teeth I should be getting a new set of those anyways. I've had the same set of bottom aligners for nearly 6 months. The ortho also said Invisalign has been improving the style and shape of the buttons on the aligners to get a better grip and improve movement so there shouldn't be any problem getting the last tooth moved into position through refinements.

I will be getting a call when the refinement aligners are in. He did not know how many sets it will take but I'm not too concerned. I am guessing it will take 3-4 weeks for the aligners to get in. In the mean time I am still wearing the last set of aligners regularly but leaving them off in some key social situations.

I will update more once refinements start.

Tray 20 - food getting stuck between my two front teeth!

I have reached the home stretch of my initial treatment. I am on tray 20 of 23. Overall I am very happy. It has been just 9 months since I have started and I pretty much have no gap. Over the past months I've notice that I pay a lot more attention to other peoples teeth than I used to. Probably because I've spent so much time looking at mine in the mirror I cannot help but look at my friends and coworkers teeth and comparing. I am noticing that a lot more people have misaligned teeth than I thought. I am noticing more people with overcrowding and others with small gaps I never noticed before. In all the years I have known these people I thought (and still think) their teeth looked great. My two front teeth have such a small gap now that it is smaller than that of some of these other people that I have never noticed anything before. Even though I have 2 1/2 more trays I very much feel I have gotten rid of my gap!

Looking at my old pictures absolutely makes me sick. I've said this before but I was never that embarrassed of my teeth before as I was so used to them but now I literally get a stomach ache looking at my old pictures.

Since my teeth have gotten so close together now I am now finding food, particularly meat, frequently getting food stuck between my two front teeth. This has happened before in the past months but now it is small strands of food. This is extremely exciting for me as 9 months ago I could fit my tongue between my two front teeth. I am also noticing that as my teeth get closer together the gums between my front teeth are slowly squishing and cutting to make way for the teeth. While this is not all that painful it does create a slight sting when I get food stuck between the teeth.

There are two things I am not happy with though as the initial treatments are ending. First, the bottom of my two front teeth are not flat. You can comewhat see it in my last posted picture but instead of being flat and even they instead are almost an upside down V shape. I am hoping my orthodontist can do somethign to round or even that out. Second, there is still the issue of the one tooth that seemingly did not rotate much at all. I am going to have to have refinements soley for this tooth to rotate it into place. I am so used to Invisalign at this point that I am fine with it but it is something worth noting.

Overall though, I am very happy. I am much more confident in my smile and often get comments about how great my smile is looking from all kind of people. Especially my wife... she comments on it so much now that it makes me wonder just how ugly she used to think I was!

Helpful Invisalign website links and blogs for other's expirience and views on Invisalign

I know most of you are like me where before starting Invisalign I read about it as much as I could to get as much information as possible about what I was getting into. I did countless Google searches and read through a lot of people's blogs to get an wide perspective of experiences. To help some of you looking to my site for guidance here are a number of blogs I read through that you may find useful as well.

Blogs:
http://www.myinvisalignblog.com/ (My Hollywood Smile)
http://invisaligndiaries.blogspot.com/
http://langsinvisalignjourney.blogspot.com/
http://invisalign-london.blogspot.com/
http://missyinvisalign.blogspot.com/

Websites:
www.bracesreview.com
www.bestdentalplus.com
www.invisalign-reviews.com