I just wanted to share my experience. I got braces on in 2001, and was debanded about 7 or 8 years ago (maybe even 9 years I can't even remember it's all been so long. I'm 27 now). Anyway, I was given Essix retainers and was never good about wearing them to begin with. It has been years since the last time I have even seen a retainer much less worn one. Last month while cleaning out my bathroom I found one of my old Essix retainers in the sink cupboard. Out of curiosity I tried to put it on, and not surprisingly, it did not fit. I called the orthodontist who was nice enough to let me come in for a retainer check. He poked fun at me and pointed out as loud as he could so everyone could hear "Let's see here, when was the last time you came, oh wow March of 07", and I could hear everyone chuckle including the other patients that were in their chairs. Anyway, it turns out that one tooth has relapsed, receding inward. This also happens to be the tooth was originally horizontally impacted, that had to be pulled down with a surgically attached wire. He gave me two options to attempt to fix this, either put braces back on, which would be total overkill for one tooth plus cost prohibitive, or try to push back into place with a modified Essix retainer. He took a new mold of my teeth, made a new Essix retainer with a small bump on the inside of the retainer behind the problem tooth. He then cut a window on the other side so the tooth has room to move. he said I MUST wear the retainer 24/7 for this to work. Wish me luck!
You can see what's going on in the pictures below. It's kind of hard to tell when you look straight ahead like in the first picture but from the side (second pic) it's quite obvious.
Alec
