Rules are made to be broken….??

Tray 3. 57 days down, 192 days to go

Hi there, remember me..?

Ok so I’m hugely overdue with this post…I blame moving house, a trip to Russia and planning an imminent wedding! Sorry…

So now I’m halfway through my third set of trays, I’ve had the attachment on my lower tooth replaced and I have broken an awful lot of Invisalign rules. I also had my first experience of travelling with Invisalign – which was trickier than I had anticipated and led to some of the aforementioned rule smashing.

The house move was as stressful as your standard move – it just had the extra minor faff of making sure my toothbrush was to hand and that I knew which box my next set of aligners were in! I did have a minor panic though – I moved onto my second trays a few days before moving house, and by the time we were in the new house something nasty had happened to my lips. At first they were just a bit dry, and then they DIED. Literally, they were so dry I could barely feel them and they were flakey as hell. And BRIGHT red. I looked ridiculous. So aside from it being thoroughly unpleasant, I was convinced I was somehow allergic to the new set of trays, or the water at the new house. Or both. Not great.

Sightseeing in Moscow

48 hours after moving into the new place, we flew to Russia for the wedding of a couple of our friends. I picked up Blistex at the airport to try and resuscitate my lips and hoped they’d sort themselves out by the wedding. I’ve no idea what triggered the zombie lips, but after a few days of excessive Blistex use and antihistamines (just in case), they’d more or less returned to normal.

Russia was amazing (and the wedding was epic), but managing my Invisalign became a real pain. First off, we were away for a week and were essentially eating out for lunch and dinner every day. That makes aligner removal/replacement a bit of a palava, particularly if you’re with a big group of people who begin to think you have a bladder complaint if you keep disappearing off to the bathroom. Secondly, you can’t drink the tap water in Russia…who knew? That meant carrying a bottle of water everywhere as well, and brushing my teeth over a toilet bowl on more than one occasion. Classy. I have to admit that when we were out sightseeing and had to grab lunch on the go, the aligners got put back in without my teeth getting a brush (though a good swish with water).

The day of the wedding I was really bad. What with most of my clothes being in boxes, I had limited choices when we packed for the trip, and in my sleep deprived state just chucked stuff in a bag. This meant that I didn’t pack a handbag suitable for holding my Invisalign case and toothbrush/paste, as well as camera, makeup and other handbag related junk. I therefore made the decision not to wear my aligners for the duration of the wedding, which started at midday.

12 hours without my trays in. *GASP!*

I know.  Very, very, VERY bad me. The Invisalign Gods will be punishing me….

I’ve tried to be extra good at getting the hours in since then, but I know I’m becoming lazy. Once the trays have stopped hurting after a couple of days, it’s so easy to think they’ve finished doing their job. It’s then that you suddenly realise you’ve had them out for hours. ‘I’ll just have one more cup of tea while they’re out’…’I’ll wait til the next ad break’…‘I’ll just finish this chapter’… Oh crap.

I posted on one of the Invisalign forums to ask what kind of damage I might be doing by being so lazy, and the response seemed to be that I wouldn’t be giving my teeth time to bed down in their new position, and could be screwing up my treatment in a way that will require correction later on. MUST DO BETTER. MUST DO BETTER. MUST DO BETTER.

I started on the third set of trays the day we came back from Russia, and did the usual night-time switchover to give the trays some time to shift my teeth so it wouldn’t be too hard to get them out. It was a bit tough to get the top tray over The Mutha attachment on my front tooth, but no big deal. By morning I could get them in and out fine, though it took me a couple of days to catch all the spiky scratchy bits and deal with them using a metal nail file.

Getting the attachment on my bottom tooth replaced was fairly straightforward as well, though at one point there were three people with various implements in my mouth…! Good job I don’t freak out too easily…. The aligner goes in and out without any trouble, but the tooth ached a bit for the first few days – probably as the aligner caught up on the work that should’ve been done for the previous few weeks…

Anyways, I think that’s about all I can think of for now. I’ll be switching onto my next set of aligners early next week, and am due back at the dentist towards the end of July to check in and collect my next batch of trays. I’ll update the gallery as I go and will pop back on here to let you know how it’s all going.

Ta ra for now!

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