About My Treatments

Yes, you read that right. Treatments, plural. My first teeth straightening effort EVER started back in 2012 when I was 30 years old. Invisalign made me this video showing the before and after results I should expect in just under a year.

It's pretty short, but you can see lots of teeth moving slightly into better alignment. The bumps are my attachments. If you don't know what those are you can check out the post I Got My Attachments. And the little .2 and .5 markings show places where they planned to shave a little off the teeth to make room. I have a post about that too Interproximal Reduction if you're curious. Oh an by the way, they didn't end up shaving anything on the top and shaved way too much on the bottom.

Treatment 1 Results - Mediocre

My teeth did not look as promised after 48 weeks. I was not satisfied and told my dentist. Luckily Invisalign offers unlimited refinements within the first 5 years when you pay for a full plan. (The express plan doesn't get these and is usually half the cost.) Ok, not so bad I thought. So I went on to Treatment 2 with new set of trays with no more attachments. After 26 weeks one of my attachments was already stained and I wanted it gone. Treatment 2 was to be 30 weeks long.

Treatment 2 Results - What Treatment 2?

After about 10 trays these things wouldn't even go on right anymore. This is referred to as "not tracking" properly. I told my dentist and they were like, "Woah that's not normal, we should go ahead and fabricate a new set." Enter Treatment 3, which were some how 32 weeks long and I was popping on new trays more like every week than every two weeks.

Treatment 3 Results - Good!

I feel like the results were good, not great. But sure as heck a lot closer to the original video, but it took almost 2.5 times a long as originally promised. I don't know if removing the attachments was a bad idea. Maybe it was, but there were stains on them. I wasn't going to wear stained attachments for another year. I was ready to be done and I got retainer fabricated. Honestly, they never told me I'd be expected to wear those every night for the next two years.

You can head over to the My Progress page to see photos between treatments. I also detailed out treatments 1-3 here.

Fast Forward to 2018 - Treatment 4

It's been more than 5 years since my original treatment. I'd broken up with my dentist or dentists as I never knew who was even employed there anymore. My retainers no longer fit, no matter how many times I tried. The fear of losing all my hard-earned progress started to haunt me.

After my first 3 treatments, I decided I wasn't going to be lazy and I needed to just go hard or go home. I found the best dentist on yelp and asked him to do my Invisalign. He declined. He told me he had no business (and neither did any other general dentist) handling a tough case like mine. He referred me to the best orthodontist in town.

My orthodontist is a badass. I knew it after one appointment. Here are some of the images he took.

He took a panoramic X-Ray of my teeth. Upon meeting me, he turned to a massive screen in the room which had this pulled up. With no prior information, he proceeded to rattle of my entire dental history in less than 1 minute.

Panoramic X-Ray of my Teeth

His assistant took a digital mapping of my teeth. These are super high tech digital renderings. They are far more accurate than the molds most dentists create by shoving massive goop-filled trays into your mouth for 6 mins per attempt.

Digital Mapping of my Teeth

They took before of my teeth from all the angles with a high quality camera and shared them with me. I sort of felt like my other dentist tried to do this, but they never showed me the images.

Before Treatment 4

They also took an X-Ray of my skull, since I have had Invisalign-induced popping that started after my first treatment. My post Oh the Lockjaw! describes the pain, intensity, and nature of the locking I experienced.

Treatment 4 Overview

Right now all I know is that treatment 4 will include some variation of the following:
Total Treatment Length: 14 months
Months 1-8: Upper teeth have clear braces, Lower teeth have Invisalign
Months 9-14: Invisalign on upper and lower
Teeth shaping where necessary, polishing, bite adjustment, teeth resurfacing as necessary for a better bite.

I originally went in for just invisalign, but upon talking with the dentist, time was a factor. He felt that the amount of rotation my K-9s needed would be a long process for invisalign. I put my faith in him and we're going to tackle this one with clear braces. Eight months hardly seems like a long time, but I guess we'll see!