I apologize in advance for the lengthy post; I was just wondering if this sort of thing is normal.End of July, I went in to the ortho recommended by my dentist for a consultation hoping I was a candidate for Invisalign, and the doctor says I was! She estimated a 18 month treatment time, which sounded fine to me, so I paid, got the little scanny thing done (which was pretty awesome), and they set up an appointment to pick up my aligners in early September.
Well. The office called me about a week early, asking if I could come in then. Thinking my aligners had come in early, I said yes and arranged my work schedule to pick them up. When I get into the office, the doctor says my top teeth are much worse than my bottom teeth (which I knew), and because of that, they'd take 30 aligners to straighten, while my bottom teeth only require 20-something. She then whips out a set of weird plastic bracket things that she wants to attach to my teeth so she can use rubber bands to make more room up top, which would make my Invisalign treatment move faster. I honestly wanted to cry because I wasn't expecting this at all. I really wanted Invisalign because it's discrete and I can eat whatever I want (I love food, haha). But I told her if she thought it was best, I'd do it, so she attached the weird plastic thing to my top teeth and a little metal hook to my first molar on the bottom, showed me how to use the rubber bands, and I was on my way. It wasn't as noticeable as I thought it was going to be, and I got used to it pretty quickly (even though I keep biting my cheek on the reg
). So not so bad! I was wearing a retainer on my bottom teeth until my first set of bottom aligners came in (so my bottom teeth wouldn't get messed up).So YESTERDAY, they called to let me know my first sets of bottom aligners came in. Great. I went in today to pick them up and check the fit, and I'm not entirely sure they're fitting the way they're supposed to. I think they might be hitting the brackets on my molars, which is keeping them from sitting down all the way, but the assistant said to give it a week and call if they're still being weird. Which is fine. But what really threw me for a loop today was the doctor telling me my lateral incisors on top are smaller than normal, and they'll either have to put veneers on them (?!) or file down my bottom teeth to match. She asked me which I would prefer, and I was basically speechless. Why didn't anybody bring this up at my consultation? Is that normal? I completely understand that as treatment progresses, other problems may become apparent, or the course has to change a bit, but surely that's something that could have been diagnosed when she first examined me, right?
Anyway, I told her I don't want veneers if it's avoidable at all (she agreed), so we're going to straighten first and see where we're at. But gosh, every time I go in, I get another unpleasant surprise
I'm still excited to have my teeth fixed, so fingers crossed it's smooth sailing from here.
I did notice a couple of gaps forming, so that's pretty cool.