My Invisalign Blog

The Creation Of My Hollywood Smile

The Most Experienced Invisalign Wearer In The World™?

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Two and a half years in, I think I must be close to being the world expert on wearing Invisalign.

I was undoubtedly the most complicated case that my orthodontist had ever taken on when I started, and I believe I’m still his longest running case. Most of his patients swan in and out of his offices every few weeks, visiting him for six months to a year, and then wander off again, retainers in hand, to carry on their lives the same as before; just a little bit better looking.

Not me. As I amble into the surgery, apologies in hand about whatever the current month’s misdemeanour is (forgetting to change the aligners on the right day, mostly) he sighs resignedly. It isn’t that I want to make my treatment longer than it is, or that I can’t bear to end our six weekly visits, it’s just that after all this time the thrill of changing to the next set is almost gone and some weeks when I’m supposed to change aligners, I simply forget.

The good news about this, I suppose, is that it goes to show exactly how comfortable Invisalign really are. I don’t think about them at all these days, my mouth is as comfortable with them as without, in fact, sometimes when I’m not wearing them my mouth almost feels strangely empty. And therein lies the problem really. I need to think about them just a little bit.

This visit, as I confessed that I had again slipped an aligner behind, so that I only needed two, not three new aligners to take me through to my next appointment, my orthodontist shook his head and said “You’d have been finished if you were in metal braces, you know.”

The truth is though, as I told him, that I would rather wear Invisalign for 10 years than wear metal braces for one- a sentiment with which he heartily agreed. To me, there is simply no contest.

And whilst I sometimes forget to change, and wear my Invisalign sets for three weeks instead of two, I take comfort from the fact that at least I wear them too much, and not too little.

Of course, there’s a very good reason why my treatment has taken so long; we always knew that it would. My orthodontist made it very clear from the beginning that I was right on the boundary of being suitable for Invisalign treatment. You can see the offending tooth that has meant that I have been pushing at the limits of Invisalign’s capabilities on my original clincheck:

Whilst my upper teeth are now in retainers, and my lower teeth look almost perfectly straight from the front, that wayward tooth on the lower arch is still there, strewn across the bottom of my mouth. I’m currently about five aligners short of the gap being large enough to start moving it into place, and I can’t wait to try.

My orthodontist is not by any means convinced it will ever move, he fears it is somehow fused to my jaw bone or in some other way completely stuck, and that ultimately I may have to simply remove it. I however remain deliriously optimistic; my treatment has gone so well and so easily this far that I’m simply not ready to concede that anything could go seriously wrong at this point.

Let’s hope I’m right!

Fillings With Invisalign – My Broken Tooth

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There’s a little rigmarole I have gone through with every dentist I have ever visited. After they have completed my numerous fillings (there always seems to be something that needs fixing up in my mouth…) they ask me the dreaded question about “how often I floss.”

In most of my life I pride myself on being a truthful and honest person. I would rather eat my own arm than steal, I never ever lie to my husband (except maybe a teeny, tiny one about the price of my shoes, but that doesn’t count, right?!) and I am generally truthful and honest in everything I do. But somehow, before Invisalign, I was terrified to admit the truth to my dentist, that I rarely, if ever, flossed.

Fillings with Invisalign - a dentist's syringe

Are fillings with Invisalign possible?

So I would cast my eyes down, feigning a quick mental calculation, and come up with a hesitant “once a week, maybe?” whilst he would consider my face with a dubious expression and tell me how I needed to floss every day without fail. I would look concerned and nod my agreement and then go home to continue on my merry path of rarely flossing.

That is, until Invisalign. The moment I started wearing Invisalign, my ticket to a new, improved me, I diligently followed my orthodontist’s instructions to floss, if not every time I ate, then at least two or three times a day. So much so, that my ten year old daughter, in all her tween wit, has dubbed me a “flossing freakazoid”

All of this flossing has had its benefits. Since getting Invisalign I have had the least fillings of any two year period of my life. Namely none. My teeth look whiter and healthier and when my (very happy) dentist puts his camera in my mouth and shows me my teeth up on the screen I can literally see the difference. In fact, last time I saw him he asked me to thank my orthodontist for getting me to do what he had never been able to.

So my failure to floss has been cured, and everyone is happy.

That is until the other night.

There I was, virtuously flossing, smug and safe in the knowledge of my superior oral hygiene, when I felt a small crack and a tug, and felt something on my tongue. Fishing the ‘something’ from my mouth with the tip of my finger I could see not only that it wasn’t a piece of food, but that it was actually, gulp, a piece of my tooth. Not a large piece, more of a small sliver of one of my back molars. Fatter than a fish bone and worryingly black on one side.

One of the best things about Invisalign is that it is uniquely moulded to the shape of your teeth. However, at times, like when you are foolish enough to break a tooth with over-vigorous flossing, that can be a disadvantage too. I was filled with terror that fixing my tooth would mean that my upper aligner would no longer fit. I didn’t know how long it would take to mould and fit a new one and had visions that before it could be done my teeth would happily rearrange themselves.

Could fillings with Invisalign make my teeth go from this:

Mar ’11

to this:

2008 – Before Invisalign

It was Friday night when this happened, and with my husband out of town and my children safe in bed I thought that there was nothing I could do until Monday. Except that by the next morning it hurt.

So it was with a little fear that I walked gingerly into an emergency dental clinic first thing Saturday morning, two children in tow, each of them a little more thrilled than the other at the idea of watching the dentist giving me a “huge” injection in my mouth. I was also, truth be told, more than a little afraid of the cost; crowns aren’t cheap, and I was dreading being given bad news.

So imagine my joy when the dentist told me that although the ‘something’ (which I handed him, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, and secreted inside an Invisalign case) was a piece of my tooth as I feared, he thought he could fix it with a filling and that he hoped he could do it in such a way that my Invisalign would still fit.

Twenty minutes later, face numb and with my mouth vaguely dribbling, it was time to try and refit my upper Invisalign. The dentist offered to do it for me and after 30 seconds of his rubber gloved fingers vainly scurrying around my mouth, pushing and pulling at my aligner he handed it to me in defeat. Vaguely panicked and without a mirror or any sensation in my numbed cheek I immediately and joyfully popped it into my mouth, slotting it into place at the first attempt. Bingo.

So, all is not lost if you need a filling with Invisalign, and to the joy of my dentist, the flossing can continue. Just a little more gently this time….

Compliance, Compliance, Compliance. Why Invisalign Compliance Is Key!

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After all of the turmoil from losing my Invisalign when on holiday I was absolutely terrified about going to see my orthodontist. Not because he is particularly fearsome or because I thought he would lecture me- he’s a pretty laid back kind of guy fortunately, but because I thought he would tell me that I had done irreparable damage to my treatment.

The good news is that after a quick five minute check around my mouth he told me that actually, everything is perfectly on track!… Now, the thing is, don’t try this at home kids. That title you just read? It isn’t me nagging you. It’s me nagging myself. The only thing that stands between you and great teeth if you have Invisalign is compliance, and whilst I have generally been reasonably compliant with the need to wear my braces 22 hours a day, the holiday episode was not good. Not good at all. So don’t take my lack of Invisalign compliance as a sign it won’t hurt your teeth to wear them a bit less either.

So, in the interests of doing the right thing I would like to point out here that losing your Invisalign braces and having to skip two aligners isn’t just stupid, it’s really really stupid. I could easily have messed up much of the good work that has so far been done with my teeth. Invisalign compliance is everything and the difference between and average and great result with Invisalign braces. According to my orthodontist I am very fortunate not to have caused myself a lot more problems and put my treatment back by months. I think what saved me is that fact that although I skipped directly from set 5 to set 8 on my lower teeth, I actually wore set 8 full time for over a month whilst on holiday, only whipping them out occasionally to overindulge in red wine and other holiday extravagances. That month of enforced wear without being able to change my aligner seems to be what really gave my teeth time to settle down into their shiny, new, much shifted positions. Nonetheless, don’t do it!

As for my upper arch, regular readers may remember that I had just finished treatment on my upper teeth and was wearing my upper 6 aligner (before I lost it…) as a retainer. Having moved back to aligner number 5 as a substitute to the lost number 6 my orthodontist says that there is little point in re-ordering #6. Apparently, the movement from one aligner will be only 0.1mm whereas the cost to replace the lost tray will be the rather grand sum of $150. I’m trusting his judgement on this one and as far as I can tell my teeth still look as good as they did….

At this point I am free to get my crown done and finish my upper teeth. Having spent so much time and effort getting to this point I really want to find the best dentist possible to complete my smile, so I have been on the hunt for a great cosmetic dentist to do the job. If you know of one in Brisbane, Australia please let me know via the comments form. I am looking for someone that can make natural looking crowns that will match my other teeth perfectly, who will reshape my gum to make my gumline more symmetrical and someone that will put up with my endless questions and abject terror. Not much to ask is it?

Meanwhile, whilst I hunt for the right dentist I am planning to use nitewhite again now that my upper attachments have been taken off. I want my teeth to be as white as possible before I get the crown as once it’s in place I can’t whiten again or my teeth won’t match.

Invisalign complaince - picture of Anthony wiggle with over-White teeth

Invisalign compliance won’t make your teeth look like these, luckily!

Longtime readers will remember that I whitened my teeth very successfully at the start of my treatment, but after almost two years they are looking a little yellow again and really need a touch up. ( I was naive enough to think that whitening was permanent, but apparently not) Whitening is so addictive that I’m hoping I won’t be tempted to overdo it and end up looking like Anthony Wiggle!

(Apologies to those of you without children- suffice to say he’s a toddler superstar with highly over bleached, glow in the dark teeth)

I’ll leave you with a picture of my teeth as they are today. Hopefully this is the last time they will be photographed with the ugly crown to the left of my front upper teeth still in place. Despite how terrified I am about the process of renewing it I am really looking forward to seeing how my teeth look with a new, natural looking crown.
Invisalign Compliance - image of teeth

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone that leaves me such encouraging comments. It really does help to have all the comments and advice from everyone else going through the same process.

Travelling With Invisalign Braces…Tip #1

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Well, sorry folks, it’s been a while. Yet again I have been off globetrotting with scant, if any, regard for my blog; so my apologies that my updates have been rather thin on the ground lately. The good news is that I have been merrily collecting tips for travelling with Invisalign whilst on holiday – or rather, what not to do as the case turned out.

It all started so well. I had remembered to carefully pack an extra wash bag filled with all of the Invisalign supplies that I might need on holiday- the sterilising tablets, the floss, the emergency Colgate Wisps, the spare toothbrushes- you get the picture. I had also packed a tiny version in my carry on bag containing everything I might need to get me through the trials of a 24 hour flight from Australia to the Uk. Brushing your teeth in plane toilets is one of the joys that everyone should try to avoid as much as possible, so my plan was to abandon all pretence of wearing my Invisalign for 22 hours on the flight, try to manage about 16 hours, and hope for the best.

With all of the scurrying about, last minute emptying of the fridge, frantic unpacking and repacking of children’s cases to search for missing toys in response to tear stained pleas that a month long trip entails, I didn’t have time to have breakfast before leaving for our 8am flight. So, as is my usual style I whipped out my Invisalign, grabbed a snack bar and a nutritious bottle of diet coke (I know, I know) and headed out to the taxi clutching passports, drink bottles, favourite teddy bears and a thousand other bits and bobs in my clammy, overspilling hands.

Travelling with Invisalign - pack your aligners! Image of suitcases

Travelling with Invisalign – pack your aligners!

Thirty minutes later we were at the airport, bags checked in, feeling surprisingly calm and organised when I suddenly remembered that my Invisalign weren’t in my mouth. After two minutes of frantic rifling I realised, with a leaden stomach, that they were neither in my handbag or my carry on bag. That left two options; they were either in a checked in packed suitcase, or sitting nonchalently at home on the top of my coffee machine. Of course, whilst I had packed the lower aligners that I needed to change to in a fortnight, I had forgotten to pack my previous set as a back up and as the top aligners were my last ones in the series. This meant If I didn’t find them I would have no upper braces for a month.

Two minutes later I was back in a cab, hyperventilating and begging the poor bewildered driver to speed through suburban Brisbane to get back to my house as fast as possible. At this point I knew that it was a round trip of about an hour from airport to my house and that it was about an hour and twenty minutes until my 24 hour, non refundable flight took off, with or without me.

Fortunately, my taxi driver rose to the occasion admirably, his foot never leaving the floor, and seat belt burns not withstanding, we made it to my house in around 22 minutes, a record. Of course, after a frantic two minute search which included a quick scan of all the most likely places that I dump my braces I simply could not find them. Anywhere. I ran from room to room becoming increasingly hysterical and much to taxi drivers amusement even ran back out into the garden and began foraging through the dustbin in an attempt to find them. Finally, after about six frantic minutes I came to the conclusion that they must be in my checked in bags, grabbed the previous sets from a drawer to wear on the journey and flew back into the taxi to start another hair raising grand prix back to the airport.

We made the flight. Just. By the skin of our teeth.

Travelling with Invisalign - image of plane toilet

Travelling with Invisalign – brushing in the plane toilet is not an experience to be savoured!

Of course, it was the usual joy on board of the rigmarole of 24 hours of putting in aligners, being offered a drink, removing aligners, drinking, squeezing past other passengers,queuingg for toilets, attempting to brush teeth in the fist sized, stained sink, returning to seat, five minutes later being offered food, removing aligners….you get the picture. Invisalign on planes are hard even if you aren’t squeezing your teeth into the previous set that you had stopped wearing a week ago. I don’t think I managed to wear them more than about 12 hours out of the 24, and even that was fraught with inconvenience.

It took me 24 hours after we arrived to get over my jet lag sufficiently to launch the search through our 90 kilos of luggage for my set six aligners. Despite checking the fifteen thousand small suitcase pockets, every washbag, the ten thousand pencil cases that my children deem necessary for a months holiday, they simply weren’t there.

Stuck in the Uk, on the other side of the world from my orthodontist, we had extensive email discussions back and forth about what exactly I could do to get my teeth from set 5 top and bottom that I was currently wearing, into the set 8 lower that I had in my bag. In all of the palaver, I had also forgotten set 7. Yes, I really am that stupid. I was astonished to be told that replacements would cost me $600. Gulp. Not only a stupid mistake but a costly one too.

So, to avoid the $600, with a little encouragement, some panadol, and a surprising amount of brute force, I actually managed to move my teeth from set 5 lower, to set 8 lower, skipping two whole sets.This incidentally is really not advisable except in dire emergencies. Hell, they were tight. There were moments, trying to force them onto my teeth where I wasn’t sure whether my teeth or the aligners would break first, but nonetheless, they went in in the end.

My instructions from my orthodontist were then to wear set 8 for three weeks before moving onto set 9 as normal. In the meantime, to also wear set 5 upper as retainers.

Home safe and sound I am still waiting for my orthodontists appointment to find out the damage I have done to my treatment. To this day, having looked through my whole house, I have no idea where set six went- only that they are gone, and it appears gone for good.

So, tip #1 for travelling with Invisalign. Remember to take them with you….

An Invisalign Braces Tattoo?

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I have been a bad, bad Invisalign patient the last week.

On two occasions in three days I have left the house with my Invisalign braces casually strewn across the top of my coffee machine where I have hastily dumped them in my frenzied hurry to get my first caffeine hit of the day.
coffee machine

There is always this horrible moment of realisation, usually when I’ve driven just a bit too far to turn back, or when I am running just a bit too late to mean that turning back is an option- when my children are just reaching the stage where insults are about to turn into out and out back seat warfare, when I suddenly realise that my mouth feels strangely empty and that the zing on my tongue is not toothpaste, but sour coffee and toast…

Of course, I sit in the car in the morning traffic, nose to tail with the car in front, the sounds of my orthodontist’s 22 hours a day mantra ringing in my ears, but still, I don’t go back. There my braces sit, unworn, until the evening.

By the time I get back home in the late afternoon, when I casually sidle up to the coffee machine, pick up my saliva stewed aligners and run them hastily under the tap, I try not to calculate how many germs might have multiplied on them through the day whilst I haven’t been wearing them. And oh, they are tight. I can literally feel that my teeth have been rearranging themselves. Taking their chance to retreat back to their old, higgeldy piggeldy ways.

So, despite the fact that I should be wearing my last upper Invisalign aligner as of yesterday, I am actually skulking around the house in the one before, hoping that it will soon become loose enough for me to dare to change it. I am now so close to the end for my upper arch (although, still forty something more aligners for the bottoms) I want to wear them as much as possible. I want my teeth to be right.

As ever, the hardest thing with these braces is simply remembering to put them back in after eating and to wear them enough hours in the day. So, if you see an odd looking, red-headed woman walking around Brisbane with INVISALIGN? tattooed across her forehead, you’ll know it’s just me, trying out my new way of reminding myself to wear my aligners..

teeth tattoo