Metal Mouth Message Board

So I'm going along with my treatment just fine, doing my 22 hours a day and not having too much difficulty aside from hating those attachments. I'm anxious for my next appointment because I will finally reach double digits: Trays 10 out of 23.

The doctor does something different at the appointment...something called tracking. He marks my attachments with some kind of marker, and then sees if the attachments and the tray touch or if there is space. Turns out, tray 9 wasn't touching, so he tries tray 8. No good. He tries tray 7 and 6...still no good. Tray 5 is "better" so I am told to wear tray 5 for FOUR weeks. Never mind the fact that I already wore tray 5 for 3 weeks, tray 6, 7, and 8 for three weeks each, and tray 9 for two weeks. And yes, I am going to have to repeat trays 6, 7, 8, and 9, too.

My questions is this: why was I allowed to progress to trays 6, 7, 8, and 9 if there was a problem? What has been happening with my teeth in the past 2.5 months? Was it a waste of time? All I was told by the doctor was "I'm sorry. Sometimes it happens." Huh? And now tray 5 hurts like h-e-l-l, probably because my teeth have already moved on past that stage. I'm frustrated and I feel like I have been misled.

Is this normal? Have any of you experienced this?

This just happened to me today!

I got bumped back from aligner 15 to aligner 12. I knew 15 was messed up. I moved and switched orthos right after aligner 11 and didn't have an appointment with the new doctor until today - I probably wasn't wearing them enough...and I started smoking again. Well I am convinced it's smoking more than not wearing them enough so I'm quitting cold turkey today. Invisalign costs a fortune - it better work...

This can happen from time to time. Invisalign has a hard time doing a few different types of movements, and this particular tooth may just need some extra coaxing. Just be sure to wear your aligners religiously and follow your orthodontist's directions and hopefully everything will move along well. It is not uncommon for invisalign to require a little more attention than just popping in new aligners every few weeks. Some people are that lucky, but most aren't.

Thanks everyone. I still don't understand why I was given trays 6, 7, 8, and 9 if my teeth had not moved properly at tray 5. I saw the ortho at the end of tray 5 and he said everything was fine as he gave me the next trays to wear. Seems he should have taken care of the problem then and had me wear tray 5 a few more weeks rather than progress me on with four new sets of trays to wear before coming back to see him. I have to repeat 2.5 months because of this!

I would have though that if they wanted you to go backward, you would have regressed backward and then started again. For instance, instead of going from #9 directly to #5, why wouldn't you go 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...? I mean, isn't the reason that we can't skip directly from #1 to #10 because it would be too much of a shock to the teeth?

jeni wrote:I would have though that if they wanted you to go backward, you would have regressed backward and then started again. For instance, instead of going from #9 directly to #5, why wouldn't you go 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...? I mean, isn't the reason that we can't skip directly from #1 to #10 because it would be too much of a shock to the teeth?

In my case the last few haven't fit correctly and that's because I moved and didn't have any ortho appointments with the new guy until this set of aligners. Apparently taking you back a bunch of aligners takes you back to the point where everything went off track. I originally posted that I went back to 12 but 12 didn't fit either, so I ended up going back to 11. Totally bummed out.

my trays almost never fit perfectly. sometimes there is a small visual space in the attachment area. i asked about this and my ortho said not to worry because the attachments do wear down some over time and as long as they are still there they will do their job. hopefully, that is accurate. so far so good, anyway.

I made a special appointment to talk with my ortho about it...he gave some lame excuse that didn't make sense to me. And of course he implied that I was doing something wrong (i'm doing everything according to instruction). Anyway, I noticed on the computer screen that it was my lower three that had the tracking problem...no indication of a problem with the uppers. Couldn't he have kept me going on with the upper, and just bumped me back on the lower? I've noticed some of you aren't always matching up with the numbers on the upper and lower trays.