Crooked Teeth, Part II

My next appointment with my orthodontist was scheduled for three weeks after my initial consultation.  I was pretty sure I wanted Invisalign.  I just had to figure out how to pay for it.  Basically, my soon to be awesome teeth will be all thanks to my credit card, COBRA coverage, and deciding to pay everything up front and receive a discount.  Total out-of-pocket expenses turned out to be just over $4,700.

I received a mini case presentation where I got the whole Invisalign spiel and got to ask questions.  I didn’t really have much questions.  In fact, the only one I can remember dealt with teeth whitening.  Because the trays are customized for each individual, they’re perfect for those at-home teeth whitening products.  Unfortunately, because I would be getting attachments, or buttons, glued to my teeth to help the trays move and twist some teeth into position, only the tooth surfaces still exposed would lighten, and I would end up with unevenly whitened teeth at the end of the Invisalign treatment.

I also got to see a casting made from the mold they took at the first appointment.  It was kinda gross looking.  The jacked up teeth aside, the fact that it’s just your mouth kinda seemed creepy.  I got to see the x-rays also.  Interestingly, I have one wisdom tooth still hiding!  Most of the people I know who’ve ever talked about wisdom teeth only ever talked about extraction, and it mostly occurred in high school.  Up till now, I’ve always assumed I just never had them, and it explained why I had so much spacing in my teeth.  My dentists never mentioned it to me either.  But I do have one, on the lower right jaw, which I can choose to remove later.  I don’t see any benefit to it, so . . . meh.  The only other thing that I can remember from the presentation was this filing tool.  It looked less like a file and more like a grater.  I was told it may have to be used.  I’m hoping that really means they’re just giving me this info just in case, and it’s really not likely that they’ll need it.

The time in the actual orthodontist chair included another exam by my orthodontist.  I think the main thing they wanted to check was the lesions on my tongue they saw at the first appointment.  At that appointment, they asked me if I used any tobacco products or drank alcohol.  I said no to the tobacco, but I felt kinda guilty about the alcohol usage, which is ever so minimal.  I really don’t drink much, but it was still kinda hard to admit.  She was still a doctor, after all.  But she reassured me it wasn’t a judgment thing.  If the lesions were serious, they would have referred me to someone who specialized in that.  I think the biggest concern was tongue cancer.

Anyway, when they were looking at my tongue, they saw that the lesion wasn’t there any more.  The were supposed to be on the right side of my tongue.  It just wasn’t there.  BUT, I did have a lesion on the left side.  They had check their notes and pictures.  It appeared that the lesion had moved.  And thus, I was told I had a geographic tongue!  Please don’t go googling.  I can honestly tell you that what I found on Google Images is totally NOT representative of what I have.  I don’t even have it all the time.  When I do have any lesions, they’re just these white squiggles or circular formations, no longer/wider than a centimeter.  And they migrate slowly across my tongue.

From there, there was another impression made by the assistant, this time specifically for Invisalign.  This one was a little bit different from my initial impressions.  Mainly it just took longer.  And I think they used a lot more gunk.  There was a lot of stuff in my mouth.

That was pretty much it.  I paid and I was told the wait for the trays would be 6-8 weeks.  I was curious why it took so long, and I found out that the trays are manufactured outside of the US.  And so, the wait began.