Janice – Invisalign.

22 months in and I should have been finished in 16 months.

And if I wasn’t so damned particular and wanted all of my teeth straightened I would probably have been finished in the 16 months original quoted.

But having spent 3 years researching, having consultations, considering and generally procrastinating, I am that difficult patient that actually wants all of my teeth straightened and not just most of them.

I should say at this point that most of what has been promised has been delivered, painlessly and effortlessly.   All the problems I had read about with Invisalign; mostly pain and difficulty in removing the aligners haven’t been my experience at all.   The bulk buying of pain killers before I started wasn’t necessary,  not even a twinge of pain at any time, just the mildest of sensitivity on a few of the teeth a few times.  Nothing  to complain about at all.  The aligners  go in and come out easily, the special Invisalign ‘Outies’ I bought on-line to help you to remove them have not been used.

The results overall  are amazing.  Over bite, under bite, open bite all corrected and now I have the perfect bite.  All teeth (bar one) are lined up like soldiers and apart from the obvious aesthetic improvement my mouth feels a lot more comfortable than it did before.

The problem for me is just one tooth, centre front at the bottom,  which was set back from the rest due to overcrowding.  It is still not perfectly aligned despite three re-moulds and three  completely new sets of aligners over 22 months just because of this one problem.

There simply was not enough space for all my teeth on the bottom.  I addressed this point with the dentist right at the beginning and was assured that Invisalign could manage this with some filing down to create the much needed space.

Filing down was done but after 8 months the first batch of braces started failing to move the one tooth, the offending  tooth beat the aligner.

So more moulds were taken and 4 weeks down the line the first set of  what  Invisalign call ‘Refinements’ arrived.  I was confident that they would have addressed the problem with this new set.  After all you can’t expect them to get everything completely right first go, can you?

More filing down was done and off I went having mentally calculated the all important end date after another 18 aligners.

Another five   months down the line and there was the same problem.  There was no more space for the same tooth to move.

So back to the dentist  for more new moulds to be taken.  Negotiating  with the dentist on the simple need for more space to be created by more filing down resulted in blank stares and silence.

Which brings me to the next problem with  Invisalign.  Your dentist has no input into your treatment.  They just supply the aligners , put the attachments on when they are told to and do exactly the amount of fling down they are told to.  If Invisalign doesn’t say to do any more filing, your dentist will not be doing any, irrespective of obvious need.

Any attempt at discussing or reasoning is futile.  You are dealing with a computer in California which doesn’t respond to questions.  It is a one way street of communication.  Invisalign tells you what will be and you don’t question.  Unfortunately that is an approach that has never quite worked for me.

‘Refinement’ set number 2 inevitably failed for the same reason so here I am after 22 months with ‘Refinement’ set number 3 of aligners all because of one single tooth.  Another six months of 19 aligners which will make it 2 years and 4 months, a whole year more than I was original quoted.  And that is if they actually work this time.  Fourth time lucky?    Maybe, but  I’m not holding my breath.