Refinement tray 12U/10L pictures and 3 new attachments

Update photos from the end of tray 12:

The new attachments:

Trays on - the new attachments are a little wider than expected. My right lateral incisor has been so so sore.

Trays off

(picture here removed Sept 2020)

Goofing off with my new mitts during a trip to the mountains.

My eyes are nowhere to be seen but at least my teeth look pretty even!

End of refinement tray 2 pictures and attachments

Sorry I haven't been updating as much, my last couple of trays have been pretty uneventful. They were both without attachments and aside from my front tooth being pretty sensitive, I barely noticed that I had them on. I was a bit annoyed because I wanted to talk to Dr. A about this (tooth sensitivity) when I came into his office on Wednesday but he just popped in briefly while the hygienist was working on my mouth and was nowhere to be found when I was finished.

It's been so long though, I forgot how attachments felt but lucky for me I've got 8 of them now! Fortunately, I had also cut the side of my lip flossing so it made the struggle of trying to get my new tray (3) out even more fun. It's been a couple of days now though so I've gotten used to having attachments in. I'm supposed to get more (on my front teeth) but not until tray 13 so it won't be for a while yet.

Pictures:

natural smile

my new attachments

And the attachments are on!

I'm happy to report that I had 11 attachments placed on my teeth this morning and seem to be doing ok so far. They definitely make my braces more visible but still less so than a metal wire would have been. Dr. A's offered to take the attachments out for my wedding day (7 months into a 9 month treatment plan) so I'm not too concerned. In the mean time, the trays are pretty tight going and and out and feel kind of funny in mouth but I got a lot better after the first time and hopefully will get used to it soon.

One thing I have to say though is that while all of my questions have been answered (by the assistant) and i don't really have any burning questions I've been pretty disappointed by the amount of face time I've had with Dr. A. With the exception of the first couple of visits, he just seems to appear briefly during my visits and leaves the rest to his assistant. Is this normal practice for other dent/orthos, am I expecting too much?

Heh - I guess something kind of good came out of the mix up with my insurance claim though, they aren't processing the next claim until they've sorted the first one out which is a good thing since the christmas bills should be coming any minute now!

I'm kind of dreading dinner tonight. I'm supposed to go out for dinner for a friend's birthday and it's going to be a bit of a pain taking my trays on and off. Speaking of which, a couple of weeks ago I had lunch with some friends I hadn't seen in a while and one of them, K, noticed how often I was excusing myself. On our way out, she pulled me aside and asked "oh, so I was just wondering... are you expecting by any chance?" I could barely stop myself from bursting out laughing and explained about the braces. I guess some people might be offended by the comment but I'm a really tiny girl so I usually don't take comments implying that I've gained weight with any offense and my friend happens to be a physician and probably has this sort of thing on her mind more often than most.

Now that we're on the topic of weight. I find I've really lost my appetite in the last few days which is not good because I've been trying to offset that to begin with. On top of that, I've been eating more slowly than usual which is actually increasing my time spent without my trays. I guess I'll have to work on that. Really looking forward to getting some exercise machines so that I can work out again!

6 week pictures below. Honestly I never thought I'd be posting pictures of my teeth given how self conscious I've been of them all of my life but having viewed other people's blogs, I wanted to show others what I'm going through to get wherever I'll be approximately 6-7 months from now. I hope no one's scared off by pictures of my bad teeth!