Glad you have a sense of humour, you will need it!!
So here is my view, but you need to balance that with the many many far more positive reviews and experiences on this forum, and I'm still only 11 weeks in.
BUT.... right now if I could rewind the clock I would go with lower ceramics and upper linguals or even full ceramics. The main reasons I wanted linguals was because I believed the "no-one will know" hype and I didn't want anyone to know. In reality (and I stress again that other people's experiences are obviously different) it is extremely obvious that something weird has happened to me and it would be far easier frankly to just have visible braces. My speech, whilst rallying and improving a bit after a few weeks, has recently hit rock bottom again, and I cannot get through a single conversation or business meeting without bad lisping, and struggling to get the words out. Admittedly, most people don't notice or don't care, but some do, and I do and it is really driving me nuts now.
If your treatment includes elastics further down the line, find out where your chosen ortho stands with that (i.e. night only or most of the day). If they insist on most of the day then again in my opinion there is very little benefit in going for the invisible lingual route... (see the post from cs2thecox a few days back with useful info on elastics with linguals and a better experience).
I have a very very small mouth, and it makes things very difficult to work with, nowhere for the tongue to rest, impossible to clean (despite the wonderful Waterpik).
Eating/chewing is still a problem. But I experience very little actual pain and discomfort, and no ulcers since weeks.
So in my head, lower ceramics would give me more room for the tongue and that is what I would have chosen with hindsight, assuming it would have been possible with my bite (which is also problematic).
I had my lower and upper fitted at the same time. I had already booked a week off work following my appointment so when I walked in and my ortho hit me with "we might just fit the lowers today" I was really quite annoyed as I had been led to expect a full fitting. So we went with a full fitting and I'm not clear whether that was the right thing or not, but I couldn't have afforded to take another week off after the second fitting (of course I might not have needed to).
Good luck with your decision making, I wish I had spent longer researching and weighing up options before I actually made the decision, and I didn't find this forum until after I had started. At the end of the day you have to remind yourself why you want it, remind yourself that the end result should be great, and then be prepared for some ups and some downs.
And don't take too much notice of my recommendation, as my experience has probably been one of the most negative on here!
