Trays eight and tongueburn

So here I am, one tray off half way through the treatment. This eighth set have been quite problematic. As I said, I put them in early as and then they split almost immediately, as well as that, these one gave me terrible mouth sores and scraped my tongue so much I had problems speaking! Because I was in Munich for a few days and eating acidic saurkraut and drinking beer it was making the stinging worse and not talking wasn't an option if I didn't want to appear completely unsociable so I ended up not wearing the sets that much. I've tried to make up for it since coming back and won't put number nines in until 17 days after putting these in. My crossbite tooth is about half a millimeter over the front of the bottom teeth so it's not technically a cross bite anymore! Still, I want it to line up with the other teeth before I start celebrating.

Late entry - Trays seven

Hi there,

I'm a bit late with this entry because my broadband went down.

This set of trays split just before the end of the two weeks so I moved onto trays eight a bit early which also promptly split quite quickly. Anyway, I'll let the photo show the progress.

33% there - End of tray six

As I'm a third of the way through my treatment I thought that it might be a good time to post a before and after couple of pics.


The braces are so much part of my life now that I barely notice them, though one drawback is that the moving teeth has completely destroyed my bite until they are settled into their new positions. I never have my mouth completely shut and chewing is a bit of a challenge so I've taken to kind of hoovering up my fayre. Not that pretty.


Six months to go!

End of five - photo update

Hey there. Not much to say other than tray five and I have been to Mexico on holiday. Pleased with progress with this set and the extent to which my crossbite tooth has headed out from behind my lateral incisor.

Tray five - early days and ouch!

No photo this time but just a quick update whilst it's on my mind and in my mouth.

I got so impatient with boring tray four (sorry nothing personal) that I snuck the number fives in two days early. Don't tell my dentist.

Anyway, I really know that these babies are in. I had the most pain on my lower molars as though each of them is being grip in a vice and wrenched inwards. They are of course letting me know that they don't like this treatment very much but tough! They shouldn't have been lounging around messing up my bite and pushing my front teeth into funny positions. Fingers crossed for some major movement back there!

End of tray four and seeing no movement

Well here's the latest for what it's worth. I don't really feel that I've seen much movement with these babies which is a bit demotivating and I'm itching to get my fifth set on. I saw a really cool blog which documented what happens when Invisalign doesn't work. Check out Dawna's blog on the Useful Links section to the right. For my part, I'm hoping for some major tombstone alignment come set five.

Tray four and dental confusion

Am now on tray four. I visited my dentist and was a little bemused by a couple of points. Firstly, he tried to give me my seventh trays until I pointed out that I was currently wearing my third trays and then he felt that where he shaved a gap between my two front teeth four weeks ago, the gap had closed at the top but not the bottom so he shaved a little more for good measure. Now, I hope this works and he doesn't have to keep shaving, otherwise this will be the most expensive way to have my two front teeth removed.



The picture shows the new gap. He also shaved between my cross-bite tooth and the one next to that so I expect it to start steaming through to the front anytime soon!



As for the bottom teeth, there hasn't really been too much change in the photos. I think this is because teeth at the back need to move first to create a bit of space for them so I will have to live with the crookedness in this set for a while yet. I have four attachments on my lower teeth and two of the molars need twisting by almost 90 degrees to reach their correct position. These are the teeth that my dentist feels will be the most challenging - not my crossbite. When I wake up in the mornings with a new set, these are the teeth that feel most tender so I guess it's working!

Final thought: There are a few other Invisalign blogs out there but what I find incredibly baffling is that the majority of them don't feature photographs! Why is this? Surely charting the visible difference is the most valuable thing you can do for fellow Invisaligners out there. However, I've found a couple of good'ens in my web searches which I've posted in the 'Useful links' list to the right of the page.