Invisalign - Week 1

I copied this from my May 10th posting in my personal blog.

So, the invisalign trays came in last Wednesday, and I picked them up on Wednesday evening.  At first, I was kind of worried how not invisable they seemed - Like, you can see the top of the plastic where your teeth and gums meet if you look closely.  But, then I started looking at pictures from this weekend, and you can't tell in pictures at all (which I'm glad about).  So far, only one person has asked just from conversation, and I told another person as I apologized for having to take them out to eat.

Speaking of which, the whole eating part is hard.  The upside is that you can take that out (remember that episode of SATC where Miranda got food caught in her braces? - none of that), but that also means that you need to take them out.  That's hard to do gracefully.  If I'm leaving work and driving somewhere, I'll just do it in the car before going in.  Or, like the other day, I was at lunch with a friend and knew she wouldn't be grossed out if I just did it quickly.  But, like today, I'm at a training conference and we all moved from the conference room to lunch.  I finally excused myself to the bathroom and did it, but there are times when that won't exactly work either (work picnic for example).  It's not forever at least.

So, I need 22 aligners, which equates to a little over 10 months (you get a new one every two weeks).  I can handle that much, since they were talking 2-3 years of real braces.  After that, if there's anything that either me or the dentist doesn't like, I can have them make additional trays at no cost (start to straight is one price).  I'm guessing that I'll want to be done and won't choose that option, but I might feel differently once I see the final product.  [That's one of the few downsides - If something doesn't look quite right or goes wrong in the middle, they can't change it on the fly.  The only option is new impressions and whole new trays being made.]  After that, there's going to be some cosmetic dentistry work, but I'm going back to my normal dentist for that -- some bonding, bleaching, and leveling teeth out.  Not cheap, but by tax day next year, I'll have a total hollywood smile.