Invisalign

 My baby tooth... once extracted it began to crumble a little, as if it no longer had to hold up the fort anymore and had done its job.

When I was about 9 years old, an adult tooth started to come out before its corresponding baby teeth left its place.  The baby tooth showed no sign of movement, and before long, the adult tooth had grown out fully and right behind the baby tooth, in kind of a shark's teeth alignment.  At this point, my father was a graduate student at Harvard, and although we had basic health and dental insurances, the insurance didn't cover most of the cost for braces.  My parents couldn't afford braces and I so went without them.  From then onwards, each time I would go to a dentist for a cleaning or a cavity, I would be told I needed to correct this baby-tooth problem.  I never did.  And then I stopped going to a dentist altogether, because once I turned 24, I wasn't covered by my parents' dental insurance anymore.  And I myself didn't have dental insurance.  It seemed easier to go without, I suppose, because I could avoid mention of my need for braces, which I had grown to hate and dread. And the baby tooth remained lodged right where it had been.  I considered it a slight deformation, but learned to exist with it.  To say I didn't worry about it would be a lie, since on occasion I had dreams about the baby tooth suddenly falling out at the most inopportune moment, to my utter terror and mortification.  But to my relief, this never happened.  The baby tooth appeared determined to stay.

This past year, though, I finally went to a dentist.  David, who had found a dentist he liked in New York, succeeded in getting me to go with him.  I ran out of excuses, and knew, despite my inclination for denial, that I should really get my teeth cleaned.  And so I went, and the inevitable discussion of dental work arose........ and I finally decided to take on the problem and get Invisalign (with a lot of encouragement from David). 

Invisalign is a "clear alternative to braces" -- the whole idea is that since they are clear, they are "invisible."  Series of of clear, removable braces are calculated to slowly realign teeth over a period of time, in various "sets" of braces.  My realignment process is projected to take about a year.  To begin Invisalign, I first needed to get my baby tooth extracted and have molds made of my teeth.  Without the baby tooth, I sport a gap between the front row my teeth, behind which protrudes a grown up tooth.  It's very strange to hold one's own baby tooth at age 30, knowing it had been in your mouth since it came out as a toddler.  I have been with this tooth for a very long time.

After having taken the molds about 6 weeks ago, I finally began my first set of grown-up braces today -- they feel incredibly odd, like I have a mouthful of plastic.  Kind of like wearing a super teeth-tight mouth guard at ALL times.  Plastic shrink-wrap for teeth.  It's a bit uncomfortable right now, and they are not easy to put on and take off, but I am told all this will get better as I spend more time with them.

David says they are hardly noticeable.  I hope so.  And I sure hope I get better taking them off.  I am supposed to take them off whenever I eat or drink anything with sugar.  I have a feeling that Invisalign will lead to a certain amount of weight loss -- I will surely opt to forgo needless snacking in favor of not having to bother with the taking-out and then putting-back-in of Invisalign.  When I mentioned this thought, my dentist told me that, indeed, most people lose weight with Invisalign precisely because of this reason. 

And so begins my journey of realigning my teeth!