Interproximal Reductions!

I had an appointment with my ortho last week and received five interproximal reductions (IPRs) between my slightly crowded bottom teeth. Going into the appointment, I wasn't sure if I would need them...but I did. It was kind of scary to have a tiny, diamond-crusted saw blade buzz through my teeth, but it didn't hurt at all. My ortho has been in orthodontics for a long, long time, so I'm sure something like that was no big deal to him. Plus, my teeth really weren't that crowded to begin with. He only sawed a 0.2 mm space between them, so it's not noticeable to anyone -- almost not even noticeable to me...almost. :)

My ortho said everything was looking good and gave me two more sets of trays before I left. I was dying to see my ClinCheck again, so I had the hygienist/assistant show me again. It looks like, upon completion, my front, top four teeth will all be together, which is great! However, I will probably end up with a slight gap right before my canine on at least the right side of my mouth (maybe the left too...I can't remember). I wasn't thrilled about that, but that's just how my mouth is. If they made it to where all my teeth were together, my bite would be WAY off and practically all of my teeth would have to move around instead of just the front top/bottom.

I also found out that I don't have ten trays total, but only nine. It wasn't a secret or anything, I just never read the packaging and thought my treatment would require ten trays simply because it was Invisalign Express (which only allows up to ten trays). I just hope everything looks good at the end -- in real life.

That night, I put in my fourth set of trays, and, man, did it HURT! My teeth hurt for about four days, as opposed to the usual two days. Taking them out hurt a lot too. As much as I didn't like the pain, I kind of did because that meant my teeth were moving. Oh, I also had some sensitivity on my front tooth too, which was quite unpleasant, but has subsided.