Shifting smiles

Tray 5. 92 days down, 157 days to go

I am almost a third of the way through my Invisalign treatment. I’m coming towards the end of my fifth set of aligners, and tomorrow I’ll be heading to the orthodontist. Hopefully they’ll take a look, my teeth will be doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and I’ll leave with a handful of new aligners to see me through the next few months.

I had a sulk a couple of weeks back when, try as I might, I couldn’t see the slightest difference in my teeth. I was about a quarter of the way through, and figured I should be able to see something by then. I tried to think back to my clincheck, the little animated video my orthodontist showed me when I picked up my aligners for the first time. How quickly did things really start to move?

At the time, I asked if we could scroll forward a few months so I could see what my teeth would look like towards the end of August. Why? Because, people, that’s when I’ll be walking down the aisle. The wedding was kind of what triggered me going down the teeth straightening path (shallow? Maybe). I thought I could just go for Inman Aligners  and sort out my front teeth in a couple of months, but after seeing a couple of orthodontists it became clear that my teeth were worse than I thought….perhaps I was blinded by familiarity or something. Anyway, once I started thinking about having straight teeth, it was hard to forget it – particularly when people say ‘yeah no problem, we can sort your teeth out’. Just like that. No problem. So even though I knew Invisalign would be a much longer process, I still wanted to see how far along I’d have come by the time I don the white frock and a hundred cameras are pointed at me.

I seem to remember being a bit disappointed that my teeth really wouldn’t look very different by the time of the wedding. At the very start of the process the orthodontist said that a lot of the movement at the beginning would be in my back teeth, shifting them to make space for the ones at the front, so maybe that’s why. Anyway, I called the clinic in the end and asked if I could get a copy of my clincheck so I could see for myself. £10 and a few days later it popped through the door, but unfortunately it’s not quite the same as the one they had in the clinic, which allowed you to see the movement along with a timeline. This one just shows you the overall movement. But here it is so you can see:

It’s funny, even though I can’t see any change in my teeth yet, I’m already getting a glimpse of the difference having a straight smile might make.

I was looking through my photos from the Russia trip I mentioned in my last post, and came across this one picture. It’s after a fair few shots of vodka had been consumed at the wedding we went to, but I have the biggest grin on my face. Like a proper Cheshire cat, stretching my face as far as it will go type of smile. I never smile like that – a nanosecond in and my automatic reflex is to clamp my mouth shut or look down and hide my mouth. I don’t think I’d even really realised I was doing it. But a small part of my vodka-addled mind remembered that I was on the road to straighter teeth, that one day I’d be able to grin like a loon to my heart’s content, and I decided to try it out. It was good! All I need to do now is work on the rest of the face, which looked a bit maniacal in the pic….but I’ll blame that on the camera.

Til next time

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