Appointment #23 – Attachments galore

Well, if 18 attachments weren’t enough, I now have 22! Four new ones were put on my top incisors and let me say this has rendered my Invisalign far less invisible! But at this point I’m so eager for these damned fangs to go away that if this is what it takes, then fine. Bring it on.

Getting the attachments on was far quicker than the first go-round, that’s for sure! The assistant put in the lip stretcher, dried my teeth, painted on the etchant, and then put in the template tray. Cured the attachments with the blue light, pried the tray out, then sent me to the sink to rinse. Once I came back she cleaned up the attachments with the sanding wheel thing and then sent me back to the sink for one more rinse. I looked in the mirror while I was at the sink and couldn’t see the attachments so was pretty stoked. But the lighting back there is pretty dim.

When I got back to the chair she handed me set #32. They went in pretty easily. One of the orthodontists took a look and said the trays looked like they were fitting perfectly. The assistant handed me four more sets to get me into mid-March. Appointment made and on my way…

And of course the first thing I do when I get to the car is to take a look in the vanity mirror and, ugh, yeah, this is the point where I kind of wish I just had traditional braces because this Invisalign thing is now just making my teeth look 10,000 kinds of weird. At least braces would look like braces and people would know what I was up to. Unless you know about Invisalign and its attachments then you probably just think I have some really weird teeth.

With the attachments I’ve had before now you really wouldn’t notice I had them unless you were really up close and personal, but these are noticeable from more of a distance. Argh. Oh well. Only six months of this. I got through nearly four months of Carriere distalizers and elastics, and this isn’t nearly so bad, so… keeping my eyes on the prize.

The other obnoxious thing about the extra attachments is that it makes removing the top tray a lot more difficult. I can pop off the sides as easily as before, but where they used to just slide out once I got the sides off; now they’re stuck on the front teeth and I have to do some wiggling to get them off. I’m hoping that once the attachments wear down a bit that they’ll slide more easily.

Six more months, six more months.

On the positive side, the arrival of attachments means that I’m done with power ridges now. The ones on the bottom trays actually vanished with set #27. Those incisors didn’t need as much tipping as the top ones, I guess. So that’s something, right?

Will save a picture post until I finish tray #33 in four weeks so I can mark the three-quarter point. Hoping for some more visible progress by then!