After Invisalign treatment, followed by two years of part metal braces and elastics, things were at at interesting point.
The good: the gap from a missing molar down on the lower right? Gone.
My ortho managed to lift it out of its sunken state and bring up to
site with the other teeth.
The bad: it threw my bite out and I wasn't happy.
My ortho announced "he was done". I asked what that meant, and he
said the braces need to come off and I'm all set. One way he suggested
to get the bite in a better aligment was to grind some some erupted bits on some of my
molars which he feared was throwing my bite out. At first I thought, hmm, OK, let's see. But then as he was
grinding the first tooth I kind of freaked. This wasn't right. Cutting
bits of tooth away to get a better bite was not what should happen. My
ortho was really pissed off with me. I said I wanted to leave and come
back another time for him to finish this grinding job. So I sat for a
few weeks and went to see my dentist for an opinion on my bite. In
polite words, he said I had no bite. I wish I had pictures of the bite
because it was clear there wasn't one. My dentist agreed that grinding
down teeth was not a good thing. He agreed it was good that I walked
out.
So where to turn now? I decided to go see another ortho for another
opinion. I was very nervous about doing this, but my current ortho had
been so bad with communicating and explaining things to me, I had
nothing to lose but to go see someone else. I went armed with my
pictures and ortho history and had an interesting consultation. The
ortho looked over my pictures, and looked in my mouth, and I could tell
he was pretty horrified. He agreed I had no bite, and he was concerned
about what had been happening to my teeth. Well, that was it, I broke
down crying. I don't know where it came from, but I could not stop
crying. I'm in my 40's and was crying like a toddler. I was so embarrassed! I
think someone confirming what I had feared and dreaded overwhelmed me.
The years of work on these teeth, and I still had no bite. Was I stuck
like this forever?
Well, this amazing ortho made me cry even more because he said he would
fix my bite and not charge for his time. I wasn't facing another $6,000
bill (the initial cost of my Invisalign back in 2005), and this person
was not going to jump and make a ton of money out of me. He said he
wanted to restore my faith in orthodontists. I think I cried on and off
for the rest of the day unloading years of stress about my teeth.
May, 2011 I dumped my ortho. After seven years, I was the one DONE with him. He was mad, but I refused to speak with
him. I moved to the new ortho and first thing he did was to take all the
equipment out, and give me a whole summer of no braces. Freedom! No
aligners. Nothing. It was bliss. This brings us to October 2011, with
plans to go into full metal braces.
I feel bad about not having any pics for this stage, and I feel guilty about asking my
ortho office to send me them seeing as I didn't essentially pay for
them.
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