The Waiting is the Hardest Part, Part II

It's been two weeks and one day since I was at the Orthodontist and they told me that we would have to get an all new treatment plan to correct for one insubordinate tooth. They said the new trays would be there in about a week and a half. Meanwhile, I am to stay on the set of trays I was already on. In other words, we're making no progress while we wait. When my new trays come in, I find out how many sets I will have. I was on set 16 of 44, I can only imagine that the overall treatment plan will be longer, plus add in the down time while we're waiting. The anticipation is once again killing me.

Can You Bleach Your Teeth With Invisalign?

Time to reveal more of my sordid dental past. When I was a kid, my teeth were horribly stained and yellow. They not only had an overall yellow-ish tint, but had splotches of darker yellow peppered throughout. I'm not sure what caused it. I don't think that I had worse dental health than most children, especially after observing my kid's habits (we found out that when my oldest son was away at camp, he found it best to just wait to brush his teeth until someone would comment on his breath). It got so bad that my parents agreed to let me get bleach trays from the dentist. But like most things, we did it only half-way and just got an upper tray. I'm sure my parents thought that I would be a typical irresponsible middle-schooler and lose the things anyway, so they only paid for one.

What I remember actually making the most difference was the scrubbing the dentist gave me before the treatment. To prepare my teeth, he sort of just got in there and ground on them with some rotary instrument. After that, they looked much better and frankly the treatment could have stopped right there. But I got my tray, and my gel. I was to wear it all day and keep the tray filled, which was tough to do because the gel was flavored and it's hard not to suck it out. But I tried, and my upper teeth did get noticeably whiter than my bottoms. And then I lost it. Of course. I blamed the cat.

Now that I'm wearing similar trays 22 hours a day, I got to thinking that maybe I could try the whitening process again. Nowadays my teeth aren't terribly yellow, but I do find myself jealous of other's white smiles sometimes. I also do still have an interesting stain on one of my front teeth that sometimes seems more pronounced than others. I'm sure no one else notices it, but I do. So I looked up on some info on using whitening gel in Invisalign trays. I didn't find any clear answers as to whether this was a good idea or not. Some said that it's pointless because you'll end up with dark patches where the attachments were. They also point out that the Invisalign aligners fit much tighter than whitening trays, and they insist that the gel will just be forced out when they snap in anyway. Others insist that it's a great time to do it since you're already wearing the trays, and the bleaching actually permeates the enamel and whitens the teeth beneath the attachments. Everyone recommends consulting your orthodontist first. I didn't.

I am NOT recommending this, I'm just sharing my experience. I found some whitening gel on the internet one night and just decided to go for it. I won't tell you where I got it or what brand it is or how much it was, but let's just say that it's readily available and is surprisingly cheap. I keep calling it bleach out of habit, but it's actually carbamide peroxide, whatever that is.

First I remove the trays and dry them. Then I carefully place the gel across the front of the aligners, making sure to coat the entire surface and remove any excess. (the first time I made the mistake of using too much). Then I dry my teeth with a paper towel and insert the trays. I then wipe any excess off my gums with the paper towel. It is supposedly mint flavored, but tastes like medicine. If the gel sits on your gums too long, it burns. While I have them in I try not to suck the gel out, and limit swallowing. Dabbing the paper towel around my mouth every now and then helps. It's an unpleasant process. The instructions say to leave it in for 30-60 minutes and repeat as needed. I did it once a day for roughly a week, and have done it a few times since then to refresh. It has made a noticeable difference.

So can you bleach your teeth while using Invisalign? Even though I am, I'm still not sure.

What Happens When Invisalign Doesn't Work?

As I discussed in my last post, one of my teeth is not cooperating. Here is the culprit:

As you can see, it's just not moving with the rest of them, and now the attachment on that tooth no longer lines up with the notch on the tray at all, so it's pretty much hopeless that it's going to fall back into the program.

So today I went to the orthodontist for my regular appointment, and discussed it with him. He noticed it right off, of course. Basically the only way to correct it is to toss the rest of my trays and start over with a new plan from the computers at Invisalign beginning with this point in time. I was assured that this will not result in any extra costs for me. I can only guess that this will add time to my overall treatment plan, but we won't know until my new trays arrive. Luckily, that shouldn't be too long from now because my orthodontist has a new toy.

Rather than make molds like they did the first time, the office now has a machine that skips that step and creates the computerized 3D images right on the spot. This means no more mailing the physical molds to California and waiting 4-6 weeks for them to send the trays. Instead the file will be sent electronically, and I will have my new trays in a little over a week. The machine even does a preliminary treatment overview and shows you exactly how your teeth will look when done. Really cool. Here's the machine with the rough model of my teeth before it did all its processing:

The process involves a technician simply taking that wand and going over and over your teeth with it until a complete image is generated. She had some trouble with mine, mainly because the machine is new and I was only the third person she'd ever used it on, but also because it was very difficult to get the wide wand all the way to the back of my mouth to get my still-present wisdom teeth. It was very uncomfortable, and someone with a very active gag reflex would have certainly had a hard time tolerating it. But nonetheless even with the complications the whole process took about 20 minutes. If 20 minutes of being uncomfortable can save me 5 weeks of waiting time, I'm all for it.

Other than that, the visit went well. I'm to continue to wear the tray that I'm on until my new ones arrive. He was pleased with the way that the elastics (rubber bands) have been moving my lower jaw back. I was pleased that they had a fix for my wayward tooth, and that it won't cost me any more money.

Week 15 Update

Things are still going along remarkably uneventfully. However, I do have one concern that I will bring up with my orthodontist at my next appointment later this week. One of my more crooked teeth is obviously not behaving the way it's supposed to. You can see it in this picture:

It's the one on top just to the right of the large one in the center. You can see that it doesn't fill out the bottom of the tray, because it's not moving like it's supposed to. The attachment on the tooth no longer comes anywhere near the notch on the tray. This means that the flat part of the tray is actually being pressed out by the attachment, distorting the tray and affecting how it lays on the next tooth. I took this picture more than a week ago, I can tell that it's even worse now with the next tray in. That tooth is not moving.

I'm not sure what they do when things don't go as planned. All the trays are made for the whole process already. If it's bad enough do they start over with new molds? Or do they just ride the process out and then make extra corrections at the end somehow? I guess I'll find out soon.